The Happy Family
by B. M. Bower · English · Gutenberg #13670 · 391,145 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Happy Family
Author: B. M. Bower
Release date: October 7, 2004 [eBook #13670]
Most recently updated: October 28, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HAPPY FAMILY ***
[Illustration: "A man's plumb crazy to go round blatting all he
knows"]
The Happy Family
BY
B.M. BOWER
(B.M. SINCLAIR)
AUTHOR OF
"Chip of the Flying U," "The Range Dwellers," "Her Prairie
Knight," "The Lure of the Dim Trails," "The Lonesome Trail,"
"The Long Shadow," Etc.
G.W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
_1907, 1909, 1910, by_ STREET & SMITH.
_1910, by_ G.W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY.
_The Happy Family_.
To B.W.V.
_"... met the Ananias of the cow camp. I have knocked about cow
camps, mining camps, railroad and telegraph camps, and kicked
up alkali dust for many a weary mile on the desert. Yet
wherever I went I never failed to meet him. He is part and
parcel of every outfit.... He is indispensable, irresistible,
and incorrigible; and while in but few cases can he be held a
thing of beauty, he is certainly a joy forever--at least to
those who have known his type with some degree of
understanding...."_
From a letter.
CONTENTS.
ANANIAS GREEN 7
BLINK 35
MISS MARTIN'S MISSION 61
HAPPY JACK, WILD MAN 90
A TAMER OF WILD ONES 118
ANDY, THE LIAR 178
"WOLF! WOLF!" 210
FOOL'S GOLD 241
LORDS OF THE POTS AND PANS 269
* * * * *
THE HAPPY FAMILY
* * * * *
ANANIAS GREEN
Pink, because he knew well the country and because Irish, who also
knew it well, refused pointblank to go into it again even as a rep,
rode alone except for his horses down into the range of the Rocking R.
General roundup was about to start, down that way, and there was stock
bought by the Flying U which ranged north of the Bear Paws.
It so happened that the owner of the Rocking R was entertaining a
party of friends at the ranch; it also happened that the friends were
quite new to the West and its ways, and they were intensely interested
in all pertaining thereto. Pink gathered that much from the crew,
besides observing much for himself. Hence what follows after.
Sherwood Branciforte was down in the blacksmith shop at the Rocking R,
watching one Andy Green hammer a spur-shank straight. Andy was what he
himself called a tamer of wild ones, and he was hard upon his riding
gear. Sherwood had that morning watched with much admiration the
bending of that same spur-shank, and his respect for Andy was
beautiful to behold.
"Lord, but this is a big, wild country," he was saying
enthusiastically, "and the people in it are big and--"
"Wild," supplied Andy. "Yes, you've just about got us sized up
correct." He went on hammering, and humming under his breath, and
thinking that, while admiration is all right in its time and place, it
is sometimes a bit wearisome.
"Oh, but I didn't mean that," the young man protested. "What I meant
was breezy and picturesque. Things can happen, out here. Life and men
don't run in grooves."
"No, nor horses," assented Andy. "Leastways, not in oiled ones." He
was remembering how that spur-shank had become bent.
"You did some magnificent riding, this morning. By Jove! I've never
seen anything like it. Strange that one can come out here into a part
of the country absolutely new and raw, and see things--"
"Oh, it ain't so raw as you might think," Andy defended jealously,
"nor yet new."
"Of course it is new! A commonwealth in the making. You can't," he
asserted triumphantly, "point to anything man-made that existed a
hundred years ago; scarcely fifty, either. Your civilization is yet in
the cradle--a lusty infant, and a--er--vociferous one, but still an
infant in swaddling clothes." Sherwood Branciforte had given lectures
before the Y.M.C.A. of his home town, and young ladies had spoken of
him as "gifted," and he had come to hear of it, and to believe.
Andy Green squinted at the shank before he made reply. Andy, also, was
"gifted," in his modest Western way.
"A country that can now and then show the papers for a civilization
old as the Phenixes of Egypt," he said, in a drawling tone that was
absolutely convincing, "ain't what I'd call raw." He decided that a
little more hammering right next the rowel was necessary, and bent
over the anvil solicitously. Even the self-complacency of Sherwood
Branciforte could not fail to note his utter indifference to the
presence and opinions of his companion. Branciforte was accustomed to
disputation at times--even to enmity; but not to indifference. He
blinked. "My dear fellow, do you realize what it is that statement
might seem to imply?" he queried haughtily.
Andy, being a cowpuncher of the brand known as a "real," objected
strongly both to the term and the tone. He stood up and stared down at
the other disapprovingly. "I don't as a general thing find myself
guilty of talking in my sleep," he retorted, "and I'm prepared to let
anything I say stand till the next throw. We may be some vociferous,
out here twixt the Mississippi and the Rockies, but we ain't no
infant-in-the-cradle, Mister. We had civilization here when the
Pilgrim Fathers' rock wasn't nothing but a pebble to let fly at the
birds!"
"Indeed!" fleered Sherwood Branciforte, in a voice which gave much
intangible insult to one's intelligence.
Andy clicked his teeth together, which was a symptom it were well for
the other to recognize but did not. Then Andy smiled, which was
another symptom. He fingered the spur absently, laid it down and
reached, with the gesture that betrays the act as having become second
nature, for his papers and tobacco sack.
"Uh course, you mean all right, and you ain't none to blame for what
you don't know, but you're talking wild and scattering. When you stand
up and tell me I can't point to nothing man-made that's fifty years
old, or a hundred, you make me feel sorry for yuh. I can take you to
something--or I've seen something--that's older than swearing; and I
reckon that art goes back to when men wore their hair long and a
sheep-pelt was called ample for dress occasions."
"Are you crazy, man?" Sherwood Branciforte exclaimed incredulously.
"Not what you can notice. You wait whilst I explain. Once last fall I
was riding by my high lonesome away down next the river, when my horse
went lame on me from slipping on a shale bank, and I was set afoot. Uh
course, you being plumb ignorant of our picturesque life, you don't
half know all that might signify to _imply_." This last in open
imitation of Branciforte. "It implies that I was in one hell of a fix,
to put it elegant. I was sixty miles from anywhere, and them sixty
half the time standing on end and lapping over on themselves. That
there is down where old mama Nature gave full swing to a morbid
hankering after doing things unconventional. Result is, that it's
about as ungodly a mixture of nightmare scenery as this old world can
show up; and I've ambled around considerable and am in a position to
pass judgment.
"So there I was, and I wasn't in no mood to view the beauties uh
nature to speak of; for instance, I didn't admire the clouds sailing
around promiscous in the sky, nor anything like that. I was high and
dry and the walking was about as poor as I ever seen; and my boots was
high-heel and rubbed blisters before I'd covered a mile of that
acrobatic territory. I wanted water, and I wanted it bad. Before I got
it I wanted it a heap worse." He stopped, cupped his slim fingers
around a match-blaze, and Branciforte sat closer. He did not know what
was coming, but the manner of the indifferent narrator was compelling.
He almost forgot the point at issue in the adventure.
"Along about dark, I camped for the night under a big, bare-faced
cliff that was about as homelike and inviting as a charitable
institution, and made a bluff at sleeping and cussed my bum luck in a
way that wasn't any bluff. At sun-up I rose and mooched on." His
cigarette needed another match and he searched his pockets for one.
"What about the--whatever it was you started to tell me?" urged
Branciforte, grown impatient.
Andy looked him over calmly. "You've lived in ignorance for about
thirty years or so--giving a rough guess at your age; I reckon you can
stand another five minutes. As I was saying, I wandered around like a
dogy when it's first turned loose on the range and is trying to find
the old, familiar barn-yard and the skim-milk bucket. And like the
dogy, I didn't run across anything that looked natural or inviting.
All that day I perambulated over them hills, and I will say I wasn't
enjoying the stroll none. You're right when you say things can happen,
out here. There's some things it's just as well they don't happen too
frequent, and getting lost and afoot in the Bad-lands is one.
"That afternoon I dragged myself up to the edge of a deep coulee and
looked over to see if there was any way of getting down. There was a
bright green streak down there that couldn't mean nothing but water,
at that time of year; this was last fall. And over beyond, I could see
the river that I'd went and lost. I looked and looked, but the walls
looked straight as a Boston's man's pedigree. And then the sun come
out from behind a cloud and lit up a spot that made me forget for a
minute that I was thirsty as a dog and near starved besides.
"I was looking down on the ruins--and yet it was near perfect--of an
old castle. Every stone stood out that clear and distinct I could have
counted 'em. There was a tower at one end, partly fell to pieces but
yet enough left to easy tell what it was. I could see it had kinda
loop-holes in it. There was an open place where I took it the main
entrance had used to be; what I'd call the official entrance. But
there was other entrances besides, and some of 'em was made by time
and hard weather. There was what looked like awhat-you-may-call-'em--
a ditch thing, yuh mind, running around my side of it, and a bridge
business. Uh course, it was all needing repairs bad, and part of it
yuh needed to use your imagination on. I laid there for quite a spell
looking it over and wondering how the dickens it come to be way down
there. It didn't look to me like it ought to be there at all, but in a
school geography or a history where the chapter is on historic and
prehistoric hangouts uh the heathen."
"The deuce! A castle in the Bad-lands!" ejaculated Branciforte.
"That's what it was, all right. I found a trail it would make a
mountain sheep seasick to follow, and I got down into the coulee. It
was lonesome as sin, and spooky; but there was a spring close by, and
a creek running from it; and what is a treat in that part uh the
country, it was good drinking and didn't have neither alkali nor
sulphur nor mineral in it. It was just straight water, and you can
gamble I filled up on it a-plenty. Then I shot a rabbit or two that
was hanging out around the ruins, and camped there till next day, when
I found a pass out, and got my bearings by the river and come on into
camp. So when you throw slurs on our plumb newness and shininess, I've
got the cards to call yuh. That castle wasn't built last summer,
Mister. And whoever did build it was some civilized. So there yuh
are."
Andy took a last, lingering pull at the cigarette stub, flung it into
the backened forge, and picked up the spur. He settled his hat on his
head at its accustomed don't-give-a-darn tilt, and started for the
door and the sunlight.
"Oh, but say! didn't you find out anything about it afterwards? There
must have been something--"
"If it's relics uh the dim and musty past yuh mean, there was; relics
to burn. I kicked up specimens of ancient dishes, and truck like that,
while I was prowling around for fire-wood. And inside the castle, in
what I reckon was used for the main hall, I run acrost a skeleton.
That is, part of one. I don't believe it was all there, though."
"But, man alive, why haven't you made use of a discovery like that?"
Branciforte followed him out, lighting his pipe with fingers that
trembled. "Don't you realize what a thing like that means?"
Andy turned and smiled lazily down at him. "At the time I was there, I
was all took up with the idea uh getting home. I couldn't eat
skeletons, Mister, nor yet the remains uh prehistoric dishes. And I
didn't run acrost no money, nor no plan marked up with crosses where
you're supposed to do your excavating for treasure. It wasn't nothing,
that I could see, for a man to starve to death while he examined it
thorough. And so far as I know there ain't any record of it. I never
heard no one mention building it, anyhow." He stooped and adjusted the
spur to his heel to see if it were quite right, and went off to the
stable humming under his breath.
Branciforte stood at the door of the blacksmith shop and gazed after
him, puffing meditatively at his pipe. "Lord! the ignorance of these
Western folk! To run upon a find like that, and to think it less
important than getting home in time for supper. To let a discovery
like that lie forgotten, a mere incident in a day's travel! That
fellow thinks more, right now, about his horse going lame and himself
raising blisters on his heels, than of--Jove, what ignorance! He--he
couldn't _eat_ the skeleton or the dishes! Jerusalem!" Branciforte
knocked his pipe gently against the door-casing, put in into his coat
pocket and hurried to the house to hunt up the others and tell them
what he had heard.
That night the roundup pulled in to the home ranch.
The visitors, headed by their host, swooped down upon the roundup
wagons just when the boys were gathered together for a cigarette or
two apiece and a little talk before rolling in. There was no
night-guarding to do, and trouble winged afar. Sherwood Branciforte
hunted out Andy Green where he lay at ease with head and shoulders
propped against a wheel of the bed-wagon and gossipped with Pink and a
few others.
"Look here, Green," he said in a voice to arrest the attention of the
whole camp, "I wish you'd tell the others that tale you told me this
afternoon--about that ruined castle down in the hills. Mason, here, is
a newspaper man; he scents a story for his paper. And the rest refuse
to believe a word I say."
"I'd hate to have a rep like that, Mr. Branciforte," Andy said
commiseratingly, and turned his big, honest gray eyes to where stood
the women--two breezy young persons with sleeves rolled to tanned
elbows and cowboy hats of the musical comedy brand. Also they had gay
silk handkerchiefs knotted picturesquely around their throats. There
was another, a giggly, gurgly lady with gray hair fluffed up into a
pompadour. You know the sort. She was the kind who refuses to grow
old, and so merely grows imbecile.
"Do tell us, Mr. Green," this young old lady urged, displaying much
gold by her smile. "It sounds so romantic."
"It's funny you never mentioned it to any of us," put in the "old man"
suspiciously.
Andy pulled himself up into a more decorous position, and turned his
eyes towards his boss. "I never knew yuh took any interest in
relic-hunting," he explained mildly.
"Sherwood says you found a _skeleton!_" said the young old lady,
shuddering pleasurably.
"Yes, I did find one--or part of one," Andy admitted reluctantly.
"What were the relics of pottery like?" demanded one of the
cowboy-hatted girls, as if she meant to test him. "I do some
collecting of that sort of thing."
Andy threw away his cigarette, and with it all compunction. "Well, I
wasn't so much interested in the dishes as in getting something to
eat," he apologized. "I saw several different kinds. One was a big,
awkward looking thing and was pretty heavy, and had straight sides.
Then I come across one or two more that was ornamented some. One had
what looked like a fish on it, and the other I couldn't make out very
well. They didn't look to be worth much, none of 'em."
"Green," said his employer steadily, "_was_ there such a place?"
Andy returned his look honestly. "There was, and there is yet, I
guess," he asserted. "I'll tell you how you can find it and what it's
like--if yuh doubt my words." He glanced around and found every man,
including the cook, listening intently. He picked a blade of new grass
and began splitting it into tiny threads. The host found boxes for the
women to sit upon, and the men sat down upon the grass.
"Before I come here to work, I was riding for the Circle C. One day I
was riding away down in the Bad-lands alone and my horse slipped in
some shale rock and went lame; strained his shoulder so I couldn't
ride him. That put me afoot, and climbing up and down them hills I
lost my bearings and didn't know where I was at for a day or two. I
wandered around aimless, and got into a strip uh country that was new
to me and plumb lonesome and wild.
"That second day is when I happened across this ruin. I was looking
down into a deep, shut-in coulee, hunting water, when the sun come out
and shone straight on to this place. It was right down under me; a
stone ruin, with a tower on one end and kinda tumbled down so it
wasn't so awful high--the tower wasn't. There was a--a--"
"Moat," Branciforte suggested.
"That's the word--a moat around it, and a bridge that was just about
gone to pieces. It had loopholes, like the pictures of castles, and
a--"
"Battlement?" ventured one of the musical-comedy cowgirls.
Andy had not meant to say battlement; of a truth, his conception of
battlements was extremely hazy, but he caught up the word and warmed
to the subject. "Battlement? well I should guess yes! There was about
as elegant a battlement as I'd want to see anywhere. It was sure a
peach. It was--" he hesitated for a fraction of a second. "It was high
as the tower, and it had figures carved all over it; them kind that
looks like kid-drawing in school, with bows and arrows stuck out in
front of 'em, threatening."
"Not the old Greek!" exclaimed one of the girls in a little,
breathless voice.
"I couldn't say as to that," Andy made guarded reply. "I never made no
special study of them things. But they was sure old. And--"
"About how large was the castle?" put in the man who wrote things.
"How many rooms, say?"
"I'd hate to give a guess at the size. I didn't step it off, and I'm a
punk guesser. The rooms I didn't count. I only explored around in the
main hall, like, a little. But it got dark early, down in there, and I
didn't have no matches to waste. And next morning I started right out
at sun-up to find the way home. No, I never counted the rooms, and if
I had, the chances are I'd have likely counted the same one more'n
once; to count them rooms would take an expert, which I ain't--not at
counting. I don't reckon, though, that there was so awful many.
Anyway, not more than fifteen or twenty. But as I say, I couldn't
rightly make a guess, even; or I'd hate to. Ruins don't interest me
much, though I was kinda surprised to run acrost that one, all right,
and I'm willing to gamble there was warm and exciting times down there
when the place was in running order. I'd kinda like to have been down
there then. Last fall, though, there wasn't nothing to get excited
over, except getting out uh there."
"A castle away out here! Just think, good people, what that means!
Romance, adventure and scientific discoveries! We must go right down
there and explore the place. Why can't we start at once--in the
morning? This gentleman can guide us to the place, and--"
"It ain't easy going," Andy remarked, conscientiously. "It's pretty
rough; some places, you'd have to walk and lead your horses."
They swept aside the discouragement.
"We'd need pick and shovels, and men to dig," cried one enthusiast.
"Uncle Peter can lend us some of his men. There may be treasure to
unearth. There may be _anything_ that is wonderful and mysterious. Get
busy, Uncle Peter, and get your outfit together; you've boasted that a
roundup can beat the army in getting under way quickly, now let us
have a practical demonstration. We want to start by six o'clock--all
of us, with a cook and four or five men to do the excavating. Bring it
to pass!" It was the voice of the girl whom her friends spoke of as
"The life of the party;" the voice of the-girl-who-does-things.
"It's sixty-five miles from here, good and strong--and mostly up and
down," put in Andy.
"'Quoth the raven,'" mocked the-girl-who-does-things. "We are prepared
to face the ups-and-downs. Do we start at six, Uncle Peter?"
Uncle Peter glanced sideways at the roundup boss. To bring it to pass,
he would be obliged to impress the roundup cook and part of the crew.
It was breaking an unwritten law of the rangeland, and worse, it was
doing something unbusiness-like and foolish. But not even the owner of
the Rocking R may withstand the pleading of a pretty woman. Uncle
Peter squirmed, but he promised:
"We start at six; earlier if you say so."
The roundup boss gave his employer a look of disgust and walked away;
the crew took it that he went off to some secluded place to swear.
Thereafter there was much discussion of ways and means, and much
enthusiasm among the visitors from the East--equalled by the
depression of the crew, for cowboys do not, as a rule, take kindly to
pick and shovel, and the excavators had not yet been chosen from among
them. They were uneasy, and they stole frequent, betraying glances at
one another. All of which amused Pink much. Pink would like to have
gone along, and would certainly have offered his services, but for the
fact that his work there was done and he would have to start back to
the Flying U just as soon as one of his best saddle horses, which had
stepped on a broken beer bottle and cut its foot, was able to travel.
That would be in a few days, probably. So Pink sighed and watched the
preparations enviously.
Since he was fairly committed into breaking all precedents, uncle
Peter plunged recklessly. He ordered the mess-wagon to be restocked
and prepared for the trip, and he took the bed-tent and half the crew.
The foreman he wisely left behind with the remnant of his outfit. They
were all to eat at the house while the mess-wagon was away, and they
were to spread their soogans--which is to say beds--where they might,
if the bunk-house proved too small or too hot.
The foreman, outraged beyond words, saddled at daybreak and rode to
the nearest town, and the unchosen half turned out in a body to watch
the departure of the explorers, which speaks eloquently of their
interest; for cowboys off duty are prone to sleep long.
Andy, as guide, bolted ahead of the party that he might open the gate.
Bolted is a good word, for his horse swerved and kept on running,
swerved again, and came down in a heap. Andy did not get up, and the
women screamed. Then Pink and some others hurried out and bore Andy,
groaning, to the bunk-house.
The visitors from the East gathered, perturbed, around the door,
sympathetic and dismayed. It looked very much as if their exploration
must end where it began, and the-girl-who-does-things looked about to
weep, until Andy, still groaning, sent Pink out to comfort them.
"He says you needn't give up the trip on his account," Pink announced
musically from the doorway. "He's drawing a map and marking the coulee
where the ruin is. He says most any of the boys that know the country
at all can find the place for yuh. And he isn't hurt permanent; he
strained his back so he can't ride, is all." Pink dimpled at the young
old lady who was admiring him frankly, and withdrew.
Inside, Andy Green was making pencil marks and giving the chosen half
explicit directions. At last he folded the paper and handed it to one
called Sandy.
"That's the best I can do for yuh," he finished. "I don't see how yuh
can miss it if yuh follow that map close. And if them gay females make
any kick on the trail, you just remind 'em that I said all along it
was rough going. So long, and good luck."
So with high-keyed, feminine laughter and much dust, passed the
exploring party from the Rocking R.
"Say," Pink began two days later to Andy, who was sitting on the shady
side of the bunk-house staring absently at the skyline, "There's a
word uh praise I've been aiming to give yuh. I've seen riding, and
I've done a trifle in that line myself, and learned some uh the
tricks. But I want to say I never did see a man flop his horse any
neater than you done that morning. I'll bet there ain't another man in
the outfit got next your play. I couldn't uh done it better myself.
Where did you learn that? Ever ride in Wyoming?"
Andy turned his eyes, but not his head--which was a way he had--and
regarded Pink slantwise for at least ten seconds. "Yes, I've rode in
Wyoming," he answered quietly. Then: "What's the chance for a job, up
your way? Is the Flying U open for good men and true?"
"It won't cost yuh a cent to try," Pink told him. "How's your back?
Think you'll be able to ride by the time Skeeker is able to travel?"
Andy, grinned. "Say," he confided suddenly, "if that hoss don't
improve some speedy, I'll be riding on ahead. I reckon I'll be able to
travel before them explorers get back, my friend."
"Why?" dimpled Pink boldly.
"Why? Well, the going is some rough, down that way. If they get them
wagons half way to the coulee marked with a cross, they'll sure have
to attach wings onto 'em. I've been some worried about that. I don't
much believe uncle Peter is going to enjoy that trip--and he sure does
get irritable by spells. I've got a notion to ride for some other
outfit, this summer."
"Was that the reason you throwed your horse down and got hurt, that
morning?" questioned Pink, and Andy grinned again by way of reply.
"They'll be gone a week, best they can do," he estimated aloud. "We
ought to be able to make our getaway by then, easy."
Pink assured him that a week would see them headed for the Flying U.
It was the evening of the sixth day, and the two were packed and ready
to leave in the morning, when Andy broke off humming and gave a snort
of dismay. "By gracious, there they come. My mother lives in Buffalo,
Pink, in a little drab house with white trimmings. Write and tell her
how her son--Oh, beloved! but they're hitting her up lively. If they
made the whole trip in that there frame uh mind, they could uh gone
clean to Miles City and back. How pretty the birds sing! Pink, you'll
hear words, directly."
Directly Pink did.
"You're the biggest liar on earth," Sherwood Branciforte contributed
to the recriminating wave that near engulfed Andy Green. "You sent us
down there on a wild-goose chase, you brute. You--"
"I never sent nobody," Andy defended. "You was all crazy to go."
"And nothing but an old stone hut some trapper had built!" came an
indignant, female tone. "There never was any castle, nor--"
"A man's home is his castle," argued Andy, standing unabashed before
them. "Putting it that way, it was a castle, all right."
There was babel, out of which--
"And the skeleton! Oh, you--it was a dead _cow!_" This from the young
old lady, who was looking very draggled and not at all young.
"I don't call to mind ever saying it was human," put in Andy, looking
at her with surprised, gray eyes.
"And the battlements!" groaned the-girl-who-does-things.
"You wanted battlements," Andy flung mildly into the uproar. "I always
aim to please." With that he edged away from them and made his escape
to where the cook was profanely mixing biscuits for supper. All-day
moves put an edge to his temper. The cook growled an epithet, and Andy
passed on. Down near the stable he met one of the chosen half, and the
fellow greeted him with a grin. Andy stopped abruptly.
"Say, they don't seem none too agreeable," he began tentatively,
jerking his thumb toward the buzzing group. "How about it, Sandy? Was
they that petulant all the way?"
Sandy, the map-bearer, chuckled. "It's lucky you got hurt at the last
minute! And yet it was worth the trip. Uh course we got stalled with
the wagons, the second day out, but them women was sure ambitious, and
made us go on with a packadero layout. I will say that, going down,
they stood the hardships remarkable. It was coming back that frazzled
the party.
"And when we found the place--say, but it was lucky you wasn't along!
They sure went hog-wild when they seen the ruins. The old party with
the pompadoor displayed temper, and shed tears uh rage. When she
looked into the cabin and seen the remains uh that cow-critter, there
was language it wasn't polite to overhear. She said a lot uh things
about you, Andy. One thing they couldn't seem to get over, and that
was the smallness uh the blamed shack. Them fourteen or fifteen rooms
laid heavy on their minds."
"I didn't say there was fourteen or fifteen rooms. I said I didn't
count the rooms; I didn't either. I never heard of anybody counting
one room. Did you, Pink?"
"No," Pink agreed, "I never did!"
Sandy became suddenly convulsed. "Oh, but the funniest thing was the
ancient pottery," he gasped, the tears standing in his eyes. "That old
Dutch oven was bad enough; but when one uh the girls--that one that
collects old dishes--happened across an old mackerel can and picked it
up and saw the fish on the label, she was the maddest female person I
ever saw in my life, barring none. If you'd been in reach about that
time, she'd just about clawed your eyes out, Andy Green. Oh me, oh
my!" Sandy slapped his thigh and had another spasm.
Sounds indicated that the wave of recrimination was rolling nearer.
Andy turned to find himself within arm's length of Uncle Pete.
"Maybe this is your idea of a practical joke, Green," he said to Andy.
"But anyway, it will cost you your job. I ought to charge you up with
the time my outfit has spent gallivanting around the country on the
strength of your wild yarn. The quicker you hit the trail, the better
it will suit me. By the way, what's your first name?" He asked,
pulling out a check-book.
"Andy," answered the unrepentant one.
"Andy," Uncle Peter paused with a fountain pen between his fingers. He
looked Andy up and down, and the frown left his face. He proceeded to
write out the check, and when it was done he handed it over with a
pleased smile.
"What did you do it for, Green?" he queried in a friendlier tone.
"Self-defence," Andy told him laconically, and turned away.
Half an hour later, Andy and Pink trailed out of the coulee that
sheltered the Rocking R. When they were out and away from the fence,
and Pink's horses, knowing instinctively that they were homeward
bound, were jogging straight west without need of guidance, Andy felt
in his pocket for cigarette material. His fingers came in contact with
the check Uncle Peter had given him, and he drew it forth and looked
it over again.
"Well, by gracious!" he said to himself. "Uncle Peter thinks we're
even, I guess."
He handed the check to Pink and rolled his cigarette; and Pink, after
one comprehending look at the slip of paper, doubled up over his
saddle-horn and shouted with glee--for the check was written: "Pay to
the order of Ananias Green."
"And I've got to sign myself a liar, or I don't collect no money,"
sighed Andy. "That's what I call tough luck, by gracious!"
* * * * *
BLINK
The range-land was at its unpicturesque worst. For two days the wind
had raged and ranted over the hilltops, and whooped up the long
coulees, so that tears stood in the eyes of the Happy Family when they
faced it; impersonal tears blown into being by the very force of the
wind. Also, when they faced it they rode with bodies aslant over their
saddle-horns and hats pulled low over their streaming eyes, and with
coats fastened jealously close. If there were buttons enough, well and
good; if not, a strap cinched tightly about the middle was considered
pretty lucky and not to be despised. Though it was early September,
"sour-dough" coats were much in evidence, for the wind had a chill way
of searching to the very marrow--and even a good, sheepskin-lined
"sour-dough" was not always protection sufficient.
When the third day dawned bleakly, literally blown piecemeal from out
darkness as bleak, the Happy Family rose shiveringly and with sombre
disapproval of whatever met their blood-shot eyes; dressed hurriedly
in the chill of flapping tent and went out to stagger drunkenly over
to where Patsy, in the mess-tent, was trying vainly to keep the
biscuits from becoming dust-sprinkled, and sundry pans and tins from
taking jingling little excursions on their own account. Over the brow
of the next ridge straggled the cavvy, tails and manes whipping in the
gale, the nighthawk swearing so that his voice came booming down to
camp. Truly, the day opened inauspiciously enough for almost any dire
ending.
As further evidence, saddling horses for circle resolved itself, as
Weary remarked at the top of his voice to Pink, at his elbow, into "a
free-for-all broncho busting tournament." For horses have nerves, and
nothing so rasps the nerves of man or beast as a wind that never stops
blowing; which means swaying ropes and popping saddle leather, and
coat-tails flapping like wet sheets on a clothes line. Horses do not
like these things, and they are prone to eloquent manifestations of
their disapproval.
Over by the bed-wagon, a man they called Blink, for want of a better
name, was fighting his big sorrel silently, with that dogged
determination which may easily grow malevolent. The sorrel was at best
a high-tempered, nervous beast, and what with the wind and the
flapping of everything in sight, and the pitching of half-a-dozen
horses around him, he was nearly crazed with fear in the abstract.
Blink was trying to bridle him, and he was not saying a word--which,
in the general uproar, was strange. But Blink seldom did say anything.
He was one of the aliens who had drifted into the Flying U outfit that
spring, looking for work. Chip had taken him on, and he had stayed. He
could ride anything in his string, and he was always just where he was
wanted. He never went to town when the others clattered off for a few
hours' celebration more or less mild, he never took part in any of the
camp fun, and he never offended any man. If any offended him they did
not know it unless they were observant; if they were, they would see
his pale lashes wink fast for a minute, and they might read aright the
sign and refrain from further banter. So Blink, though he was counted
a good man on roundup, was left pretty much alone when in camp.
Andy Green, well and none too favorably known down Rocking R way, and
lately adopted into the Happy Family on the recommendation of Pink and
his own pleasing personality, looped the latigo into the holder, gave
his own dancing steed a slap of the don't-try-to-run-any-whizzers-on-me
variety, and went over to help out Blink.
Blink eyed his approach with much the same expression with which he
eyed the horse. "I never hollered for assistance," he remarked
grudgingly when Andy was at his elbow. "When I can't handle any of the
skates in my string, I'll quit riding and take to sheep-herding."
Whereupon he turned his back as squarely as he might upon Andy and
made another stealthy grab for the sorrel's ears. (There is such a
thing in the range-land as jealousy among riders, and the fame of Andy
Green had gone afar.)
"All right. Just as you say, and not as I care a darn," Andy retorted,
and went back to where his own mount stood tail to the wind. He did
not in the least mind the rebuff; he really felt all the indifference
his manner portrayed--perhaps even more. He had offered help where
help was needed, and that ended it for him. It never occurred to him
that Blink might feel jealous over Andy's hard-earned reputation as a
"tamer of wild ones," or mistake his good nature for patronage.
Five minutes later, when Chip looked around comprehensively at the lot
of them in various degrees of readiness; saw that Blink was still
fighting silently for mastery of the sorrel and told Andy to go over
and help him get saddled, Andy said nothing of having had his services
refused, but went. This time, Blink also said nothing, but accepted in
ungracious surrender the assistance thus thrust upon him. For on the
range-land, unless one is in a mind to roll his bed and ride away, one
does not question when the leader commands. Andy's attitude was still
that of indifference; he really thought very little about Blink or his
opinions, and the rapid blinking of the pale lashes was quite lost
upon him.
They rode, eighteen ill-natured, uncomfortable cowboys, tumultuously
away from the camp, where canvas bulged and swayed, and loose corners
cracked like pistol shots, over the hill where even the short, prairie
grass crouched and flattened itself against the sod; where stray
pebbles, loosened by the ungentle tread of pitching hoofs, skidded
twice as far as in calm weather. The gray sky bent threateningly above
them, wind-torn into flying scud but never showing a hint of blue.
Later there might be rain, sleet, snow--or sunshine, as nature might
whimsically direct; but for the present she seemed content with only
the chill wind that blew the very heart out of a man.
Whenever Chip pulled up to turn off a couple of riders that they might
search a bit of rough country, his voice was sharp with the general
discomfort. When men rode away at his command, it was with brows drawn
together and vengeful heels digging the short-ribs of horses in quite
as unlovely a mood as themselves.
Out at the end of the "circle," Chip divided the remainder of his men
into two groups for the homeward drive. One group he himself led. The
other owned Weary as temporary commander and galloped off to the left,
skirting close to the foothills of the Bear Paws. In that group rode
Pink and Happy Jack, Slim, Andy Green and Blink the silent.
"I betche we get a blizzard out uh this," gloomed Happy Jack, pulling
his coat collar up another fraction of an inch. "And the way Chip's
headed us, we got to cross that big flat going back in the thick of
it; chances is, we'll git lost."
No one made reply to this; it seemed scarcely worth while. Every man
of them rode humped away from the wind, his head drawn down as close
to his shoulders as might be. Conversation under those conditions was
not likely to become brisk.
"A fellow that'll punch cows for a living," Happy Jack asserted
venomously after a minute, "had ought to be shut up somewheres. He
sure ain't responsible. I betche next summer don't see me at it."
"Aw, shut up. We know you're feeble-minded, without you blatting it by
the hour," snapped Pink, showing never a dimple.
Happy Jack tugged again at his collar and made remarks, to which no
one paid the slightest attention. They rode in amongst the hills and
narrow ridges dividing "draws" as narrow, where range cattle would
seek shelter from the cutting blast that raked the open. Then, just as
they began to realize that the wind was not quite such a raging
torment, came a new phase of nature's unpleasant humor.
It was not a blizzard that descended upon them, though when it came
rolling down from the hilltops it much resembled one. The wind had
changed and brought fog, cold, suffocating, impenetrable. Yet such was
the mood of them that no one said anything about it. Weary had been
about to turn off a couple of men, but did not. What was the use,
since they could not see twenty yards?
For a time they rode aimlessly, Weary in the lead. Then, when it grew
no better but worse, he pulled up, just where a high bank shut off the
wind and a tangle of brush barred the way in front.
"We may as well camp right here till things loosen up a little," he
said. "There's no use playing blind-man's-buff any longer. We'll have
some fire, for a change. Mama! this is sure beautiful weather!"
At that, they brightened a bit and hurriedly dismounted and hunted dry
wood. Since they were to have a fire, the general tendency was to have
a big one; so that when they squatted before it and held out cold,
ungloved fingers to the warmth, the flames were leaping high into the
fog and crackling right cheerily. It needed only a few puffs at their
cigarettes to chase the gloom from their faces and put them in the
mood for talk. Only Blink sat apart and stared moodily into the fire,
his hands clasped listlessly around his knees, and to him they gave no
attention. He was an alien, and a taciturn one at that. The Happy
Family were accustomed to living clannishly, even on roundup, and only
when they tacitly adopted a man, as they had adopted Pink and Irish
and, last but not least important, Andy Green, did they take note of
that man's mood and demand reasons for any surliness.
"If Slim would perk up and go run down a grouse or two," Pink observed
pointedly, "we'd be all right for the day. How about it, Slim?"
"Run 'em down yourself," Slim retorted. "By golly, I ain't no lop-ear
bird dog."
"The law's out fer chickens," Happy Jack remarked dolefully.
"Go on, Happy, and get us a few. You've got your howitzer buckled on,"
fleered Andy Green. Andy it was whose fertile imagination had so
christened Happy Jack's formidable weapon.
"Aw, gwan!" protested Happy Jack.
"Happy looks like he was out for a rep," bantered Pink. "He makes me
think uh the Bad Man in a Western play. All he needs is his hat turned
up in front and his sleeves rolled up to his elbow, like he was
killing hogs. Happy would make a dandy-looking outlaw, with that gun
and that face uh his."
"Say, by golly, I bet that's what he's figurin' on doing. He ain't
going to punch cows no more--I bet he's thinking about turning out."
"Well, when I do, you'll be the first fellow I lay for," retorted
Happy, with labored wit.
"You never'd get a rep shooting at a target the size uh Slim," dimpled
Pink. "Is that toy cannon loaded, Happy?"
"I betche yuh dassen't walk off ten paces and let me show yuh,"
growled Happy.
Pink made as if to rise, then settled back with a sigh. "Ten paces is
farther than you could drive me from this fire with a club," he said.
"And you couldn't see me, in this fog."
"Say, it _is_ pretty solid," said Weary, looking around him at the
blank, gray wall. "A fellow could sit right here and be a lot ignorant
of what's going on around him. A fellow could--"
"When I was riding down in the San Simon basin," spoke up Andy,
rolling his second cigarette daintily between his finger-tips, "I had
a kinda queer experience in a fog, once. It was thick as this one, and
it rolled down just about as sudden and unexpected. That's a plenty
wild patch uh country--or it was when I was there. I was riding for a
Spanish gent that kept white men as a luxury and let the greasers do
about all the rough work--such as killing off superfluous neighbors,
and running brands artistic, and the like. Oh, he was a gay mark, all
right.
"But about this other deal: I was out riding alone after a little
bunch uh hosses, one day in the fall. I packed my gun and a pair uh
field glasses, and every time I rode up onto a mesa I'd take a long
look at all the lower country to save riding it. I guess I'd
prognosticated around like that for two or three hours, when I come
out on a little pinnacle that slopes down gradual toward a neighbor's
home ranch--only the ranch itself was quite a ride back up the basin.
"I got off my horse and set down on a rock to build me a smoke, and
was gazing off over the country idle, when I seen a rider come up out
of a little draw and gallop along quartering-like, to pass my pinnacle
on the left. You know how a man out alone like that will watch
anything, from a chicken hawk up in the air to a band uh sheep,
without any interest in either one, but just to have your eyes on
something that's alive and moves.
"So I watched him, idle, while I smoked. Pretty soon I seen another
fellow ride out into sight where the first one had, and hit her up
lively down the trail. I didn't do no wondering--I just sat and
watched 'em both for want uh something better to do."
"Finding them strays wasn't important, I s'pose?" Happy Jack
insinuated.
"It could wait, and did. So I kept an eye on these gazabos, and pretty
soon I saw the hind fellow turn off the trail and go fogging along
behind a little rise. He come into sight again, whipping down both
sides like he was heading a wild four-year-old; and that was queer,
because the only other live thing in sight was man number one, and I
didn't see no reason why he should be hurting himself to get around to
windward like that.
"Maybe it was five minutes I watched 'em: number one loping along like
there wasn't nothing urgent and he was just merely going somewhere and
taking his time for it, and number two quirting and spurring like
seconds was diamonds."
"I wish they was that valuable to you," hinted Pink.
"They ain't, so take it easy. Well, pretty soon they got closer
together, and then number two unhooked something on his saddle that
caught the light. There's where I got my field glasses into play. I
drew a bead with 'em, and seen right off it was a gun. And I hadn't no
more than got my brain adjusted to grasp his idea, when he puts it
back and takes down his rope. That there," Andy added naïvely,
"promised more real interest; guns is commonplace.
"I took down the glasses long enough to size up the layout. Glasses,
you know, are mighty deceiving when it comes to relative distances,
and a hilltop a mile back looks, through the glass, like just stepping
over a ditch. With the naked eye I could see that they were coming
together pretty quick, and they done so.
"Number one looks back, but whether he seen number two I couldn't say;
seemed to me like he just glanced back casual and in the wrong
direction. Be that is it may, number two edged off a little and rode
in behind a bunch uh mesquite--and then I seen that the trail took a
turn, right there. So he pulled up and stood still till the other one
had ambled past, and then he whirled out into the trail and swung his
loop.
"When I'd got the glasses focused on 'em again, he had number one
snared, all right, and had took his turns. The hoss he was riding--it
was a buckskin--set back and yanked number one end over end out uh the
saddle, and number one's hoss stampeded off through the brush. Number
two dug in his spurs and went hell-bent off the trail and across
country dragging the other fellow--and him bouncing over the rough
spots something horrible.
"I don't know what got the matter uh me, then; I couldn't do anything
but sit there on my rock and watch through the glasses. Anyway, while
they looked close enough to hit with a rock, they was off a mile or
more. So while I could see it all I couldn't do nothing to prevent. I
couldn't even hear number one yell--supposing he done any hollering,
which the chances is he did a plenty. It was for all the world like
one uh these moving pictures.
"I thought it was going to be a case uh dragging to death, but it
wasn't; it looked to me a heap worse. Number two dragged his man a
ways--I reckon till he was plumb helpless--and then he pulled up and
rode back to where he laid. The fellow tried to get up, and did get
partly on his knees--and number one standing over him, watching.
"What passed I don't know, not having my hearing magnified like my
sight was. I framed it up that number two was getting his past,
present and future read out to him--what I'd call a free life reading.
The rope was pinning his arms down to his sides, and number two was
taking blamed good care there wasn't any slack, so fast as he tried to
get up he was yanked back. From first to last he never had a ghost of
a show.
"Then number two reaches back deliberate and draws his gun and
commences shooting, and I commences hollering for him to quit it--and
me a mile off and can't do nothing! I tell yuh right now, that was
about the worst deal I ever went up against, to set there on that
pinnacle and watch murder done in cold blood, and me plumb helpless.
"The first shot wasn't none fatal, as I could see plainer than was
pleasant. Looked to me like he wanted to string out the agony. It was
a clear case uh butchery from start to finish; the damnedest,
lowest-down act a white man could be guilty of. He empties his
six-gun--counting the smoke-puffs--and waits a minute, watching like a
cat does a gopher. I was sweating cold, but I kept my eyes glued to
them glasses like a man in a nightmare.
"When he makes sure the fellow's dead, he rides alongside and flips
off the rope, with the buckskin snorting and edging off--at the
blood-smell, I reckon. While he's coiling his rope, calm as if he'd
just merely roped a yearling, the buckskin gets his head, plants it
and turns on the fireworks.
"When that hoss starts in pitching, I come alive and drop the glasses
into their case and make a jump for my own hoss. If the Lord lets me
come up with that devil, I aim to deal out a case uh justice on my own
hook; I was in a right proper humor for doing him like he done the
other fellow, and not ask no questions. Looked to me like he had it
coming, all right.
"I'd just stuck my toe in the stirrup, when down comes the fog like a
wet blanket on everything. I couldn't see twenty feet--" Andy stopped
and reached for a burning twig to relight his cigarette. The Happy
Family was breathing hard with the spell of the story.
"Did yuh git him?" Happy Jack asked hoarsely. Andy took a long puff at
his cigarette. "Well, I--Holy smoke! what's the matter with _you_,
Blink?" For Blink was leaning forward, half crouched, like a cat about
to pounce, and was glaring fixedly at Andy with lips drawn back in a
snarl. The Happy Family looked, then stared.
Blink relaxed, shrugged his shoulders and grinned unmirthfully. He got
up, pulled up his chaps with the peculiar, hitching gesture which
comes with long practice and grows to be second nature, and stared
back defiantly at the wondering faces lighted by the dancing flames.
He turned his back coolly upon them and walked away to where his horse
stood, took up the reins and stuck his toe in the stirrup, went up and
landed in the saddle ready for anything. Then he wheeled the big
sorrel so that he faced those at the camp-fire.
"A man's a damned fool, Andy Green, to see more than is meant for him
to see. He's plumb crazy to go round blatting all he knows. You won't
tell that tale again, _mi amigo!_"
There was the pop of a pistol, a puff of blue against the gray, and
then the fog reached out and gathered Blink and the sorrel to itself.
Only the clatter of galloping hoofs came to them from behind the damp
curtain. Andy Green was lying on his back in the grass, his cigarette
smoking dully in his fingers, a fast widening red streak trailing down
from his temple.
The Happy Family rose like a covey of frightened chickens before the
echoes were done playing with the gun-bark. On the heels of Blink's
shot came the crack of Happy Jack's "howitzer" as he fired blindly
toward the hoof-beats. There was more shooting while they scurried to
where their horses, snorting excitement, danced uneasily at the edge
of the bushes. Only one man spoke, and that was Pink, who stopped just
as he was about to swing into the saddle.
"Damme for leaving my gun in camp! I'll stay with Andy. Go on--and if
yuh don't get him, I'll--" he turned back, cursing hysterically, and
knelt beside the long figure in the grass. There was a tumult of sound
as the three raced off in pursuit, so close that the flight of the
fugitive was still distinct in the fog.
While they raced they cursed the fog that shielded from their
vengeance their quarry, and made such riding as theirs a blind gamble
with the chances all in favor of broken bones; their only comfort the
knowledge that Blink could see no better than could they. They did not
talk, just at first. They did not even wonder if Andy was dead. Every
nerve, every muscle and every thought was concentrated upon the
pursuit of Blink. It was the instant rising to meet an occasion
undreamed of in advance, to do the only thing possible without loss of
a second in parley. Truly, it were ill for Blink to fall into the
hands of those three in that mood.
They rode with quirt and spur, guided only by the muffled
_pluckety-pluck, pluckety-pluck_ of Blink's horse fleeing always just
before. Whenever the hoof-beats seemed a bit closer, Happy Jack would
lift his long-barreled .45 and send a shot at random toward the sound.
Or Weary or Slim would take a chance with their shorter guns. But
never once did they pull rein for steep or gulley, and never once did
the hoof-beats fail to come back to them from out the fog.
The chase had led afar and the pace was telling on their mounts, which
breathed asthmatically. Slim, best he could do, was falling behind.
Weary's horse stumbled and went to his knees, so that Happy Jack
forged ahead just when the wind, puffing up from the open, blew aside
the gray fog-wall. It was not a minute, nor half that; but it was long
enough for Happy Jack to see, clear and close, Blink pausing
irresolutely upon the edge of a deep, brush-filled gulley. Happy Jack
gave a hoarse croak of triumph and fired, just as the fog-curtain
swayed back maddeningly. Happy Jack nearly wept with pure rage. Weary
and Slim came up, and together they galloped to the place, riding by
instinct of direction, for there was no longer any sound to guide.
Ten minutes they spent searching the gulley's edge. Then they saw
dimly, twenty feet below, a huddled object half-hidden in the brush.
They climbed down none too warily, though they knew well what might be
lying, venomous as a coiled rattler, in wait for them below. Slipping
and sliding in the fog-dampened grass, they reached the spot, to find
the big sorrel crumpled there, dead. They searched anxiously and
futilely for more, but Blink was not there, nor was there anything to
show that he had ever been there. Then not fear, perhaps, but caution,
came to Happy Jack.
"Aw, say! he's got away on us--the skunk! He's down there in the
brush, somewheres, waiting for somebody to go in and drag him out by
the ear. I betche he's laying low, right now, waiting for a chance to
pot-shot us. We better git back out uh this." He edged away, his eyes
on the thicket just below. To ride in there was impossible, even to
the Happy Family in whole or in part. To go in afoot was not at all to
the liking of Happy Jack.
Slim gave a comprehensive, round-eyed stare at the unpromising
surroundings, and followed Happy Jack. "By golly, that's right. Yuh
don't git me into no hole like that," he assented.
Weary, foolhardy to the last, stayed longest; but even Weary could not
but admit that the case was hopeless. The brush was thick and filled
the gully, probably from end to end. Riding through it was impossible,
and hunting it through on foot would be nothing but suicide, with a
man like Blink hidden away in its depths. They climbed back to the
rim, remounted and rode, as straight as might be, for the camp-fire
and what lay beside, with Pink on guard.
It was near noon when, through the lightening fog, they reached the
place and discovered that Andy, though unconscious, was not dead. They
found, upon examination of his hurt, that the bullet had ploughed
along the side of his head above his ear; but just how serious it
might be they did not know. Pink, having a fresh horse and aching for
action, mounted and rode in much haste to camp, that the bed-wagon
might be brought out to take Andy in to the ranch and the
ministrations of the Little Doctor. Also, he must notify the crew and
get them out searching for Blink.
All that night and the next day the cowboys rode, and the next. They
raked the foothills, gulley by gulley, their purpose grim. It would
probably be a case of shoot-on-sight with them, and nothing saved
Blink save the all-important fact that never once did any man of the
Flying U gain sight of him. He had vanished completely after that
fleeting glimpse Happy Jack had gained, and in the end the Flying U
was compelled to own defeat.
Upon one point they congratulated themselves: Andy, bandaged as he
was, had escaped with a furrow ploughed through the scalp, though it
was not the fault of Blink that he was alive and able to discuss the
affair with the others--more exactly, to answer the questions they
fired at him.
"Didn't you recognize him as being the murderer?" Weary asked him
curiously.
Andy moved uneasily on his bed. "No, I didn't. By gracious, you must
think I'm a plumb fool!"
"Well, yuh sure hit the mark, whether yuh meant to or not," Pink
asserted. "He was the jasper, all right. Look how he was glaring at
yuh while you were telling about it. _He_ knew he was the party, and
having a guilty conscience, he naturally supposed yuh recognized him
from the start."
"Well, I didn't," snapped Andy ungraciously, and they put it down to
the peevishness of invalidism and overlooked the tone.
"Chip has given his description in to the sheriff," soothed Weary,
"and if he gets off he's sure a good one. And I heard that the sheriff
wired down to the San Simon country and told 'em their man was up
here. Mama! What bad breaks a man will make when he's on the dodge! If
Blink had kept his face closed and acted normal, nobody would have got
next. Andy didn't know he was the fellow that done it. But it sure was
queer, the way the play come up. Wasn't it, Andy?"
Andy merely grunted. He did not like to dwell upon the subject, and he
showed it plainly.
"By golly! he must sure have had it in for that fellow," mused Slim
ponderously, "to kill him the way Andy says he did. By golly, yuh
can't wonder his eyes stuck out when he heard Andy telling us all
about it!"
"I betche he lays for Andy yet, and gits him," predicted Happy Jack
felicitously. "He won't rest whilst an eye-witness is running around
loose. I betche he's cached in the hills right now, watching his
chance."
"Oh, go to hell, the whole lot of yuh!" flared Andy, rising to an
elbow. "What the dickens are yuh roosting around here for? Why don't
yuh go on out to camp where yuh belong? You're a nice bunch to set
around comforting the sick! _Vamos_, darn yuh!"
Whereupon they took the hint and departed, assuring Andy, by way of
farewell, that he was an unappreciative cuss and didn't deserve any
sympathy or sick-calls. They also condoled openly with Pink because he
had been detailed as nurse, and advised him to sit right down on Andy
if he got too sassy and haughty over being shot up by a real outlaw.
They said that any fool could build himself a bunch of trouble with a
homicidal lunatic like Blink, and it wasn't anything to get vain over.
Pink slammed the door upon their jibes and offered Andy a cigarette he
had just rolled; not that Andy was too sick to roll his own, but
because Pink was notably soft-hearted toward a sick man and was prone
to indulge himself in trifling attentions.
"Yuh don't want to mind that bunch," he placated. "They mean all
right, but they just can't help joshing a man to death."
Andy accepted also a light for the cigarette, and smoked moodily. "It
ain't their joshing," he explained after a minute "It's puzzling over
what I can't understand that gets on my nerves. I can't see through
the thing, Pink, no way I look at it."
"Looks plain enough to me," Pink answered. "Uh course, it's funny
Blink should be the man, and be setting there listening--"
"Yes, but darn it all, Pink, there's a funnier side to it than that,
and it's near driving me crazy trying to figure it out. Yuh needn't
tell anybody, Pink, but it's like this: I was just merely and simply
romancing when I told that there blood-curdling tale! I never was
south uh the Wyoming line except when I was riding in a circus and
toured through, and that's the truth. I never was down in the San
Simon basin. I never set on no pinnacle with no field glasses--" Andy
stopped short his labored confession to gaze, with deep disgust, upon
Pink's convulsed figure. "Well," he snapped, settling back on the
pillow, "_laugh_, darn yuh! and show your ignorance! By gracious, I
wish _I_ could see the joke!" He reached up gingerly and readjusted
the bandage on his head, eyed Pink sourly a moment, and with a grunt
eloquent of the mood he was in turned his face to the wall.
* * * * *
MISS MARTIN'S MISSION
When Andy Green, fresh-combed and shining with soap and towel polish,
walked into the dining-room of the Dry Lake Hotel, he felt not the
slightest premonition of what was about to befall. His chief sensation
was the hunger which comes of early rising and of many hours spent in
the open, and beyond that he was hoping that the Chinaman cook had
made some meat-pie, like he had the week before. His eyes, searching
unobtrusively the long table bearing the unmistakable signs of many
other hungry men gone before--for Andy was late--failed to warn him.
He pulled out his chair and sat down, still looking for meat-pie.
"Good after_noon!_" cried an eager, feminine voice just across the
table.
Andy started guiltily. He had been dimly aware that some one was
sitting there, but, being occupied with other things, had not given a
thought to the sitter, or a glance. Now he did both while he said good
afternoon with perfunctory politeness.
"Such a _beau_tiful day, isn't it? _so_ invigorating, like rare, old
wine!"
Andy assented somewhat dubiously; it had never just struck him that
way; he thought fleetingly that perhaps it was because he had never
come across any rare, old wine. He ventured another glance. She was
not young, and she wore glasses, behind which twinkled very bright
eyes of a shade of brown. She had unpleasantly regular hair waves on
her temples, and underneath the waves showed streaks of gray. Also,
she wore a black silk waist, and somebody's picture made into a brooch
at her throat. Further, Andy dared not observe. It was enough for one
glance. He looked again for the much-desired meat-pie.
The strange lady ingratiatingly passed him the bread. "You're a
cowboy, aren't you?" was the disconcerting question that accompanied
the bread.
"Well, I--er--I punch cows," he admitted guardedly, his gaze elsewhere
than on her face.
"I _knew_ you were a cowboy, the moment you entered the door! I could
tell by the tan and the straight, elastic walk, and the silk
handkerchief knotted around your throat in that picturesque fashion.
(Oh, I'm older than you, and dare speak as I think!) I've read a great
deal about cowboys, and I do admire you all as a type of free,
great-hearted, noble manhood!"
Andy looked exactly as if someone had caught him at something
exceedingly foolish. He tried to sugar his coffee calmly, and so sent
it sloshing all over the saucer.
"Do you live near here?" she asked next, beaming upon him in the
orthodox, motherly fashion.
"Yes, ma'am, not very near," he was betrayed into saying--and she
might make what she could of it. He had not said "ma'am" before since
he had gone to school.
"Oh, I've heard how you Western folks measure distances," she teased.
"About how many miles?"
"About twenty."
"I suppose that is not far, to you knights of the plains. At home it
would be called a _dreadfully_ long journey. Why, I have known numbers
of old men and women who have never been so far from their own doors
in their lives! What would you think, I wonder, of their little forty
acre farms?"
Andy had been brought to his sixteenth tumultuous birthday on a
half-acre in the edge of a good-sized town, but he did not say so. He
shook his head vaguely and said he didn't know. Andy Green, however,
was not famous for clinging ever to the truth.
"You out here in this great, wide, free land, with the free winds ever
blowing and the clouds--"
"Will you pass the butter, please?" Andy hated to interrupt, but he
was hungry.
The strange lady passed the butter and sent with it a smile. "I have
read and heard so much about this wild, free life, and my heart has
gone out to the noble fellows living their lonely life with their
cattle and their faithful dogs, lying beside their camp-fires at night
while the stars stood guard--"
Andy forgot his personal embarrassment and began to perk up his ears.
This was growing interesting.
"--And I have felt how lonely they must be, with their rude fare and
few pleasures, and what a field there must be among them for a great
and noble work; to uplift them and bring into their lonely lives a
broader, deeper meaning; to help them to help themselves to be better,
nobler men and women--"
"We don't have any lady cowpunchers out here," interposed Andy mildly.
The strange lady had merely gone astray a bit, being accustomed to
addressing Mothers' Meetings and the like. She recovered herself
easily. "Nobler men, the bulwarks of our nation." She stopped and eyed
Andy archly. Andy, having observed that her neck was scrawny, with
certain cords down the sides that moved unpleasantly when she talked,
tried not to look.
"I wonder if you can guess what brings me out here, away from home and
friends! Can you guess?"
Andy thought of several things, but he could not feel that it would be
polite to mention them. Agent for complexion stuff, for instance, and
next to that, wanting a husband. He shook his head again and looked at
his potato.
"You _can't guess_?" The tone was the one commonly employed for the
encouragement, and consequent demoralization of, a primary class. Andy
realized that he was being talked down to, and his combativeness
awoke. "Well, away back in my home town, a woman's club has been
thinking of all you lonely fellows, and have felt their hearts swell
with a desire to help you--so far from home and mother's influence,
with only the coarse pleasures of the West, and amid all the
temptations that lie in wait--" She caught herself back from
speech-making--"and they have sent _me_--away out here--to be your
_friend_; to help you to help yourselves become better, truer men
and--" She did not say women, though, poor soul, she came near it.
"So, I am going to be your friend. I want to get in touch with you
all, first; to win your confidence and teach you to look upon me in
the light of a mother. Then, when I have won your confidence, I want
to organize a Cowboys' Mutual Improvement and Social Society, to help
you in the way of self-improvement and to resist the snares laid for
homeless boys like you. Don't you think I'm very--_brave_?" She was
smiling at him again, leaning back in her chair and regarding him
playfully over her glasses.
"You sure are," Andy assented, deliberately refraining from saying
"yes, ma'am," as had been his impulse.
"To come away out here--_all alone_--among all you wild cowboys with
your guns buckled on and your wicked little mustangs--Are you sure you
won't shoot me?"
Andy eyed her pityingly. If she meant it, he thought, she certainly
was wabbly in her mind. If she thought that was the only kind of talk
he could savvy, then she was a blamed idiot; either way, he felt
antagonistic. "The law shall be respected in your case," he told her,
very gravely.
She smiled almost as if she could see the joke; after which she became
twitteringly, eagerly in earnest. "Since you live near here, you must
know the Whitmores. Miss Whitmore came out here, two or three years
ago, and married her brother's coachman, I believe--though I've heard
conflicting stories about it; some have said he was an artist, and
others that he was a jockey, or horse-trainer. I heard too that he was
a cowboy; but Miss Whitmore certainly wrote about this young man
driving her brother's carriage. However, she is married and I have a
letter of introduction to her. The president of our club used to be a
schoolmate of her mother. I shall stop with them--I have heard so much
about the Western hospitality--and shall get into touch with my
cowboys from the vantage point of proximity. Did you say you know
them?"
"I work for them," Andy told her truthfully in his deep amazement, and
immediately repented and wished that he had not been so virtuous. With
Andy, to wish was to do--given the opportunity.
"Then I can go with you out to their farm--ranchero! How nice! And on
the way you can tell me all about yourself and your life and
hopes--because I do want to get in touch with you all, you know--and
I'll tell you all my plans for you; I have some _beau_tiful plans! And
we'll be very good friends by the time we reach our destination, I'm
sure. I want you to feel from the start that I am a true friend, and
that I have your welfare very much at heart. Without the confidence of
my cowboys, I can do nothing. Are there any more at home like you?"
Andy looked at her suspiciously, but it was so evident she never meant
to quote comic opera, that he merely wondered anew. He struggled
feebly against temptation, and fell from grace quite willingly. It
isn't polite to "throw a load" at a lady, but then Andy felt that
neither was it polite for a lady to come out with the avowed intention
of improving him and his fellows; it looked to him like butting in
where she was not wanted, or needed.
"Yes, ma'am, there's quite a bunch, and they're pretty bad. I don't
believe you can do much for 'em." He spoke regretfully.
"Do they--_drink_?" she asked, leaning forward and speaking in the
hushed voice with which some women approach a tabooed subject.
"Yes ma'am, they do. They're hard drinkers. And they"--he eyed her
speculatively, trying to guess the worst sins in her category--"they
play cards--gamble--and swear, and smoke cigarettes and--"
"All the more need of someone to help them overcome," she decided
solemnly. "What you need is a coffee-house and reading room here, so
that the young men will have some place to go other than the saloons.
I shall see to that right away. And with the Mutual Improvement and
Social Society organized and working smoothly, and a library of
standard works for recreation, together with earnest personal efforts
to promote temperance and clean-living, I feel that a _wonderful_ work
can be done. I saw you drive into town, so I know you can take me out
with you; I hope you are going to start soon. I feel very impatient to
reach the field and put my sickle to the harvest."
Andy mentally threw up his hands before this unshakable person. He had
meant to tell her that he had come on horseback, but she had
forestalled him. He had meant to discourage her--head her off, he
called it to himself. But there seemed no way of doing it. He pushed
back his chair and rose, though he had not tasted his pie, and it was
lemon pie at that. He had some faint notion of hurrying out of town
and home before she could have time to get ready; but she followed him
to the door and chirped over his shoulder that it wouldn't take her
two minutes to put on her wraps. Andy groaned.
He tried--or started to try--holding out at Rusty Brown's till she
gave up in despair; but it occurred to him that Chip had asked him to
hurry back. Andy groaned again, and got the team.
She did not wait for him to drive around to the hotel for her;
possibly she suspected his intentions. At any rate, she came nipping
down the street toward the stable just as he was hooking the last
trace, and she was all ready and had a load of bags and bundles.
"I'm not going to begin by making trouble for you," she twittered. "I
thought I could just as well come down here to the wagon as have you
drive back to the hotel. And my trunk did not come on the train with
me, so I'm all ready."
Andy, having nothing in mind that he dared say to a lady, helped her
into the wagon.
At sundown or thereabouts--for the days were short and he had a load
of various things besides care--Andy let himself wearily into the
bunk-house where was assembled the Happy Family. He merely grunted
when they spoke to him, and threw himself heavily down upon his bunk.
"For Heaven's sake, somebody roll me a cigarette! I'm too wore out to
do a thing, and I haven't had a smoke since dinner," he groaned, after
a minute.
"Sick?" asked Pink solicitously.
"Sick as a dog! water, water!" moaned Andy. All at once he rolled over
upon his face and shook with laughter more than a little hysterical,
and to the questioning of the Happy Family gave no answer but howls.
The Happy Family began to look at one another uneasily.
"Aw, let up!" Happy Jack bellowed. "You give a man the creeps just to
listen at yuh."
"I'm going to empty the water-bucket over yuh in a minute," Pink
threatened, "Go get it, Cal; it's half full."
Andy knew well the metal of which the Happy Family was made, and the
night was cool for a ducking. He rolled back so that they could see
his face, and struggled for calm. In a minute he sat up and merely
gurgled.
"Well, say, I had to do something or die," he explained, gasping.
"I've gone through a heap, the last few hours, and I was right where I
couldn't do a thing. By gracious, I struck the ranch about as near
bug-house as a man can get and recover. Where's a cigarette?"
"What you've gone through--and I don't give a cuss what it is--ain't a
marker for what's going to happen if yuh don't loosen up on the
history," said Jack Bates firmly.
Andy smoked hungrily while he surveyed the lot. "How calm and innocent
yuh all look," he observed musingly, "with your hats on and saying
words that's rude, and smoking the vile weed regardless, never
dreaming what's going to drop, pretty soon quick. Yuh make me think of
a hymn-song my step-mother used to sing a lot, about 'They dreamed not
of danger, those sinners of old, whom--"
"Hand me the water bucket," directed Pink musically.
"Oh, well--take it from the shoulder, then; I was only trying to lead
up to it gradual, but yuh _will_ have it raw. You poor, dear cowboys,
that live your lonely lives watching over your cattle with your
_faithful dogs_ and the stars for company, you're going to be
_improved_. (You'll sure stand a lot of it, too!) A woman's relief
club back East has felt the burden of your no-accountness and general
orneriness, and has sent one of its leading members out here to reform
yuh. You're going to be hazed into a Cowboys' Mutual Improvement and
Social Society, and quit smoking cigarettes and cussing your hosses
and laying over Rusty's bar when yuh ride into town; and for pleasure
and recreation you're going to read Tennyson's poems, and when yuh get
caught out in a blizzard yuh'll be heeled with Whittier's _Snowbound_,
pocket edition. Emerson and Browning and Shakespeare and Gatty" (Andy
misquoted; he meant Goethe) "and all them stiffs is going to be set
before yuh regular and in your mind constant, purging it of unclean
thoughts, and grammar is going to be learnt yuh as a side-line. Yuh--"
"Mama mine," broke in Weary. "I have thought sometimes, when Andy
broke loose with that imagination uh his, that he'd gone the limit;
but next time he always raises the limit out uh sight. He's like the
Good Book says: he's prone to lie as the sparks fly-upward."
Andy gazed belligerently at the skeptical group. "I brought her out
from town," he said doggedly, "and whilst I own up to having an
imagination, she's stranger than fiction. She'd make the fellow that
wrote "She" lay down with a headache. She's come out here to help us
cowboys live nobler, better lives. She's going to learn yuh Browning,
darn yuh! and Emerson and Gatty. She said so. She's going to fill your
hearts with love for dumb creatures, so when yuh get set afoot out on
the range, or anything like that, yuh won't put in your time cussing
the miles between you and camp; you'll have a pocket edition of 'Much
Ado About Nothing' to read, or the speech Mark Anthony made when he
was running for office. Or supposing yuh left 'em all in camp, yuh'll
study nature. There's sermons in stones, she says. She's going to send
for a pocket library that can easy be took on roundup--"
"Say, I guess that's about enough," interrupted Pink restlessly. "We
all admit you're the biggest liar that ever come West of the
Mississippi, without you laying it on any deeper."
Whereupon Andy rose in wrath and made a suggestive movement with his
fist. "If I was romancing," he declared indignantly, "I'd do a
smoother job; when I do lie, I notice yuh all believe it--till yuh
find out different. And by gracious yuh might do as much when I'm
telling the truth! Go up to the White House and see, darn yuh! If yuh
don't find Miss Verbena Martin up there telling the Little Doctor how
her heart goes out to her dear cowboys and how she's going to get in
touch with 'em and help 'em lead nobler, better lives, you can kick me
all round the yard. And I hope, by gracious, she _does_ improve yuh!
Yuh sure do need it a lot."
The Happy Family discussed the tale freely and without regard for the
feelings of Andy; they even became heated and impolite, and they made
threats. They said that a liar like him ought to be lynched or gagged,
and that he was a disgrace to the outfit. In the end, however, they
decided to go and see, just to prove to Andy that they knew he lied.
And though it was settled that Weary and Pink should be the
investigating committee, by the time they were halfway to the White
House they had the whole Happy Family trailing at their heels. A light
snow had begun to fall since dark, and they hunched their shoulders
against it as they went. Grouped uncomfortably just outside the circle
of light cast through the unshaded window, they gazed silently in upon
Chip and the Little Doctor and J.G. Whitmore, and upon one other; a
strange lady in a black silk shirtwaist and a gold watch suspended
from her neck by a chaste, black silken cord; a strange lady with
symmetrical waves in her hair and gray on her temples, and with
glasses and an eager way of speaking.
She was talking very rapidly and animatedly, and the others were
listening and stealing glances now and then at one another. Once,
while they watched, the Little Doctor looked at Chip and then turned
her face toward the window. She was biting her lips in the way the
Happy Family had learned to recognize as a great desire to laugh. It
all looked suspicious and corroborative of Andy's story, and the Happy
Family shifted their feet uneasily in the loose snow.
They watched, and saw the strange lady clasp her hands together and
lean forward, and where her voice had before come to them with no
words which they could catch distinctly, they heard her say something
quite clearly in her enthusiasm: "Eight real cowboys _here_, almost
within reach! I must see them before I sleep! I must get in touch with
them at once, and show them that I am a true friend. Come, Mrs.
Bennett! Won't you take me where they are and let me meet my boys? for
they _are_ mine in spirit; my heart goes out to them--"
The Happy Family waited to hear no more, but went straightway back
whence they had come, and their going savored of flight.
"Mama mine! she's coming down to the bunkhouse!" said Weary under his
breath, and glanced back over his shoulder at the White House bulking
large in the night. "Let's go on down to the stable and roost in the
hay a while."
"She'll out-wind us, and be right there waiting when we come back,"
objected Andy, with the wisdom gained from his brief acquaintance with
the lady. "If she's made up her mind to call on us, there's no way
under Heaven to head her off."
They halted by the bunk-house door, undecided whether to go in or to
stay out in the open.
"By golly, she don't improve _me_!" Slim asserted pettishly. "I hate
books like strychnine, and, by golly, she can't make me read 'em,
neither."
"If there's anything I do despise it's po'try," groaned Cal Emmett.
"Emerson and Browning and Shakespeare and _Gatty_," named Andy
gloomily.
Whereat Pink suddenly pushed open the door and went in as goes one who
knows exactly what he is about to do. They followed him distressfully
and silently. Pink went immediately to his bunk and began pulling off
his boots.
"I'm going to bed," he told them. "You fellows can stay up and
entertain her if yuh want to--_I_ won't!"
They caught the idea and disrobed hastily, though the evening was
young. Irish blew out the lamp and dove under the blankets just as
voices came faintly from up the hill, so that when Chip rapped a
warning with his knuckles on the door, there was no sound within save
an artificial snore from the corner where lay Pink. Chip was not in
the habit of knocking before he entered, but he repeated the summons
with emphasis.
"Who's there-e?" drawled sleepily a voice--the voice of Weary.
"Oh, I do believe they've retired!" came, in a perturbed feminine
tone, to the listening ears of the Happy Family.
"Gone to bed?" cried Chip gravely.
"Hours ago," lied Andy fluently. "We're plumb wore out. What's
happened?"
"Oh, don't disturb the poor fellows! They're tired and need their
rest," came the perturbed tone again. After that the voices and the
footsteps went up the hill again, and the Happy Family breathed freer.
Incidentally, Pink stopped snoring and made a cigarette.
Going to bed at seven-thirty or thereabouts was not the custom of the
Happy Family, but they stayed under the covers and smoked and
discussed the situation. They dared not have a light, and the night
was longer than they had ever known a night to be, for it was late
before they slept. It was well that Miss Verbena Martin could not
overhear their talk, which was unchivalrous and unfriendly in the
extreme. The general opinion seemed to be that old maid improvers
would better stay at home where they might possibly be welcome, and
that when the Happy Family wanted improving they would let her know.
Cal Emmett said that he wouldn't mind, if they had only sent a young,
pretty one. Happy Jack prophesied plenty of trouble, and boasted that
she couldn't haul _him_ into no s'ciety. Slim declared again that by
golly, she wouldn't do no improving on _him_, and the others--Weary
and Irish and Pink and Jack Bates and Andy--discussed ways and means
and failed always to agree. When each one hoots derision at all plans
but his own, it is easy guessing what will be the result. In this
particular instance the result was voices raised in argument--voices
that reached Chip, grinning and listening on the porch of the White
House--and tardy slumber overtaking a disgruntled Happy Family on the
brink of violence.
It was not a particularly happy Family that woke to memory and a snowy
Sunday; woke late, because of the disturbing evening. When they spoke
to one another their voices were but growls, and when they trailed
through the snow to their breakfast they went in moody silence.
They had just brightened a bit before Patsy's Sunday breakfast, which
included hot-cakes and maple syrup, when the door was pushed quietly
open and the Little Doctor came in, followed closely by Miss Martin;
an apologetic Little Doctor, who seemed, by her very manner of
entering, to implore them not to blame _her_ for the intrusion. Miss
Martin was not apologetic. She was disconcertingly eager and glad to
meet them, and pathetically anxious to win their favor.
Miss Martin talked, and the Happy Family ate hurriedly and with
lowered eyelids. Miss Martin asked questions, and the Happy Family
kicked one another's shins under the table by way of urging someone to
reply; for this reason there was a quite perceptible pause between
question and answer, and the answer was invariably "the soul of
wit"--according to that famous recipe. Miss Martin told them naively
all about her hopes and her plans and herself, and about the distant
woman's club that took so great an interest in their welfare, and the
Happy Family listened dejectedly and tried to be polite. Also, they
did not relish the hot-cakes as usual, and Patsy had half the batter
left when the meal was over, instead of being obliged to mix more, as
was usually the case.
When they had eaten, the Happy Family filed out decorously and went
hastily down to the stables. They did not say much, but they did
glance over their shoulders uneasily once or twice.
"The old girl is sure hot on our trail," Pink remarked when they were
safely through the big gate. "She must uh got us mixed up with some
Wild West show, in her mind. Josephine!"
"Well, by golly, she don't improve _me_," Slim repeated for about the
tenth time.
The horses were all fed and everything tidy for the day, and several
saddles were being hauled down significantly from their pegs, when
Irish delivered himself of a speech, short but to the point. Irish had
been very quiet and had taken no part in the discussion that had waxed
hot all that morning.
"Now, see here," he said in his decided way. "Maybe it didn't strike
you as anything but funny--which it sure is. But yuh want to remember
that the old girl has come a dickens of a long ways to do us some
good. She's been laying awake nights thinking about how we'll get to
calling her something nice: Angel of the Roundup, maybe--you can't
tell, she's that romantic. And right here is where I'm going to give
the old girl the worth of her money. It won't hurt _us_, letting her
talk wild and foolish at us once a week, maybe; and the poor old
thing'll just be tickled to death thinking what a lot uh good she's
doing. She won't stay long, and--well, I go in. If she'll feel better
and more good to the world improving me, she's got my permission. I
guess I can stand it a while."
The Happy Family looked at him queerly, for if there was a black sheep
in the flock, Irish was certainly the man; and to have Irish take the
stand he did was, to say the least, unexpected.
Cal Emmett blurted the real cause of their astonishment. "You'll have
to sign the pledge, first pass," he said. "That's going to be the ante
in _her_ game. How--"
"Well, I don't play nobody's hand, or stake anybody's chips, but my
own," Irish retorted, the blood showing under the tan on his cheeks.
"And we won't das't roll a cigarette, even, by golly!" reminded Slim.
For Miss Martin, whether intentionally or not, had made plain to them
the platform of the new society.
Irish got some deep creases between his eyebrows, and put back his
saddle. "You can do as yuh like," he said, coldly. "I'm going to stay
and go to meeting this afternoon, according to her invite. If it's
going to make that poor old freak feel any better thinking she's a
real missionary--" He turned and walked out of the stable without
finishing the sentence, and the Happy Family stood quite still and
watched him go.
Pink it was who first spoke. "I ain't the boy to let any long-legged
son-of-a-gun like Irish hit a gait I can't follow," he dimpled, and
took the saddle reluctantly off Toots. "If he can stand it, I guess I
can."
Weary loosened his latigo. "If Cadwolloper is going to learn poetry, I
will, too," he grinned. "Mama! it'll be good as a three-ringed circus!
I never thought uh that, before. I couldn't miss it."
"Oh, well, if you fellows take a hand, I'll sure have to be there to
see," Andy decided. "Two o'clock, did she say?"
* * * * *
"I hate to be called a quitter," Pink remarked dispiritedly to the
Happy Family in general; a harassed looking Happy Family, which sat
around and said little, and watched the clock. In an hour they would
be due to attend the second meeting of the M.I.S.S.--and one would
think, from the look of them, that they were about to be hanged. "I
hate to be called a quitter, but right here's where I lay 'em down.
The rest of yuh can go on being improved, if yuh want to--darned if I
will, though. I'm all in."
"I don't recollect hearing anybody say we wanted to," growled Jack
Bates. "Irish, maybe, is still burning with a desire to be nice and
chivalrous; but you can count me out. One dose is about all I can
stand."
"By golly, I wouldn't go and feel that foolish again, not if yuh paid
me for it," Slim declared.
Irish grinned and reached for his hat. "I done my damnettest," he said
cheerfully. "I made the old girl happy once; now, one Irish Mallory is
due to have a little joy coming his way. I'm going to town."
"'Break, break, break, on thy cold, gray crags, oh sea,
And I would that my tongue could utter the thoughts that come over me.'
"You will observe, gentlemen, the beautiful sentiment, the euphonious
rhythm, the noble--" Weary went down, still declaiming mincingly,
beneath four irate bodies that hurled themselves toward him and upon
him.
"We'll break, break, break every bone in your body if you don't shut
up. You will observe the beautiful sentiment of _that_ a while," cried
Pink viciously. "I've had the euphonious rhythm of my sleep broke up
ever since I set there and listened at her for two hours. Josephine!"
Irish stopped with his hand on the door knob. "I was the jay that
started it," he admitted contritely. "But, honest, I never had a hunch
she was plumb locoed; I thought she was just simply foolish. Come on
to town, boys!"
Such is the power of suggestion that in fifteen minutes the Happy
Family had passed out of sight over the top of the grade; all save
Andy Green, who told them he would be along after a while, and that
they need not wait. He looked at the clock, smoked a meditative
cigarette and went up to the White House, to attend the second meeting
of the Mutual Improvement and Social Society.
When he faced alone Miss Verbena Martin, and explained that the other
members were unavoidably absent because they had a grudge against a
man in Dry Lake and had gone in to lynch him and burn the town, Miss
Martin was shocked into postponing the meeting. Andy said he was glad,
because he wanted to go in and see the fight; undoubtedly, he assured
her, there would be a fight, and probably a few of them would get
killed off. He reminded her that he had told her right in the start
that they were a bad lot, and that she would have hard work reforming
them; and finally, he made her promise that she would not mention to
anyone what he had told her, because it wouldn't be safe for him, or
for her, if they ever got to hear of it. After that Andy also took the
trail to town, and he went at a gallop and smiled as he rode.
Miss Martin reflected shudderingly upon the awful details of the
crime, as hinted at by Andy, and packed her trunk. It might be brave
and noble to stay and work among all those savages, but she doubted
much whether it were after all her duty. She thought of many ways in
which she could do more real good nearer home. She had felt all along
that these cowboys were an untrustworthy lot; she had noticed them
glancing at one another in a secret and treacherous manner, all
through the last meeting, and she was positive they had not given her
that full confidence without which no good can be accomplished. That
fellow they called Happy looked capable of almost any crime; she had
never felt quite safe in his presence.
Miss Martin pictured them howling and dancing around the burning
dwellings of their enemies, shooting every one they could see; Miss
Martin had imagination, of a sort. But while she pictured the horrors
of an Indian massacre she continued to pack her suit-case and to
consult often her watch. When she could do no more it occurred to her
that she would better see if someone could take her to the station.
Fortunately for all concerned, somebody could. One might go further
and say that somebody was quite willing to strain a point, even, in
order to get her there in time for the next train.
* * * * *
The Happy Family was gathered in Rusty Brown's place, watching Irish
do things to a sheep-man from Lonesome Prairie, in a game of pool.
They were just giving vent to a prolonged whoop of derision at the
sheep-man's play, when a rig flashed by the window. Weary stopped with
his mouth wide open and stared; leaned to the window and craned to see
more clearly.
"Mama mine!" he ejaculated incredulously. "I could swear I saw Miss
Verbena in that rig, with her trunk, and headed towards the depot.
Feel my pulse, Cadwolloper, and see if I'm normal."
But Pink was on his way to the back door, and from there climbed like
a cat to the roof of the coal-house, where, as he knew from
experience, one could see the trail to the depot, and the depot
itself.
"It's sure her," he announced. "Chip's driving like hell, and the
smoke uh the train's just coming around the bend from the big field.
Wonder what struck her so sudden?" He turned and looked down into the
grinning face of Andy Green.
"She was real insulted because you fellows played hookey," Andy
explained. "I tried to explain, but it didn't help none. I don't
believe her heart went out to us like she claimed, anyhow."
* * * * *
HAPPY JACK, WILD MAN.
Happy Jack, over on the Shonkin range, saw how far it was to the river
and mopped the heat-crimsoned face of him with a handkerchief not
quite as clean as it might have been. He hoped that the Flying U
wagons would be where he had estimated that they would be; for he was
aweary of riding with a strange outfit, where his little personal
peculiarities failed to meet with that large tolerance accorded by the
Happy Family. He didn't think much of the Shonkin crew; grangers and
pilgrims, he called them disgustedly in his mind. He hoped the Old Man
would not send him on that long trip with them south of the
Highwoods--which is what he was on his way to find out about. What
Happy Jack was hoping for, was to have the Old Man--as represented by
Chip--send one of the boys back with him to bring over what Flying U
cattle had been gathered, together with Happy's bed and string of
horses. Then he would ride with the Happy Family on the familiar range
that was better, in his eyes, than any other range that ever lay
outdoors--and the Shonkin outfit could go to granny. (Happy did not,
however, say "granny").
He turned down the head of a coulee which promised to lead him, by the
most direct route--if any route in the Badlands can be called
direct--to the river, across which, and a few miles up on Suction
Creek, he confidently expected to find the Flying U wagons. The coulee
wound aimlessly, with precipitous sides that he could not climb, even
by leading his horse. Happy Jack, under the sweltering heat of
mid-June sunlight, once more mopped his face, now more crimson than
ever, and relapsed into his habitual gloom. Just when he was telling
himself pessimistically that the chances were he would run slap out on
a cut bank where he couldn't get down to the river at all, the coulee
turned again and showed the gray-blue water slithering coolly past,
with the far bank green and sloping invitingly.
The horse hurried forward at a shuffling trot and thrust his hot
muzzle into the delicious coolness. Happy Jack slipped off and, lying
flat on his stomach, up-stream from the horse, drank deep and long,
then stood up, wiped his face and considered the necessity of
crossing. Just at this point the river was not so wide as in others,
and for that reason the current flowed swiftly past. Not too swiftly,
however, if one took certain precautions. Happy Jack measured mentally
the strength of the current and the proper amount of caution which it
would be expedient to use, and began his preparations; for the sun was
sliding down hill toward the western skyline, and he wished very much
to reach the wagons in time for supper, if he could.
Standing in the shade of the coulee wall, he undressed deliberately,
folding each garment methodically as he took it off. When the pile was
complete to socks and boots, he rolled it into a compact bundle and
tied it firmly upon his saddle. Stranger, his horse, was a good
swimmer, and always swam high out of water. He hoped the things would
not get very wet; still, the current was strong, and his
characteristic pessimism suggested that they would be soaked to the
last thread. So, naked as our first ancestor, he urged his horse into
the stream, and when it was too deep for kicking--Stranger was ever
uncertain and not to be trusted too far--he caught him firmly by the
tail and felt the current grip them both. The feel of the water was
glorious after so long a ride in the hot sun, and Happy Jack reveled
in the cool swash of it up his shoulders to the back of his neck, as
Stranger swam out and across to the sloping, green bank on the home
side. When his feet struck bottom, Happy Jack should have waded
also--but the water was so deliciously cool, slapping high up on his
shoulders like that; he still floated luxuriously, towed by
Stranger--until Stranger, his footing secure, glanced back at Happy
sliding behind like a big, red fish, snorted and plunged up and on to
dry land.
Happy Jack struck his feet down to bottom, stumbled and let go his
hold of the tail, and Stranger, feeling the weight loosen suddenly,
gave another plunge and went careering up the bank, snorting back at
Happy Jack. Happy swore, waded out and made threats, but Stranger,
seeing himself pursued by a strange figure whose only resemblance to
his master lay in voice and profanity, fled in terror before him.
Happy Jack, crippling painfully on the stones, fled fruitlessly after,
still shouting threats. Then, as Stranger, galloping wildly,
disappeared over a ridge, he stood and stared stupidly at the place
where the horse had last been seen. For the moment his mind refused to
grasp all the horror of his position; he stepped gingerly over the hot
sand and rocks, sought the shelter of a bit of overhanging bank, and
sat dazedly down upon a rock too warm for comfort. He shifted uneasily
to the sand beside, found that still hotter, and returned to the rock.
He needed to think; to grasp this disaster that had come so suddenly
upon him. He looked moodily across to the southern bank, his chin
sunken between moist palms, the while the water dried upon his person.
To be set afoot, down here in the Badlands, away from the habitations
of men and fifteen miles from the probable location of the Flying U
camp, was not nice. To be set afoot _naked_--it was horrible, and
unbelievable. He thought of tramping, barefooted and bare-legged,
through fifteen miles of sage-covered Badlands to camp, with the sun
beating down on his unprotected back, and groaned in anticipation. Not
even his pessimism had ever pictured a thing so terrible.
He gazed at the gray-blue river which had caused this trouble that he
must face, and forgetting the luxury of its coolness, cursed it
venomously. Little waves washed up on the pebbly bank, and glinted in
the sun while they whispered mocking things to him. Happy Jack gave
over swearing at the river, and turned his wrath upon Stranger--Stranger,
hurtling along somewhere through the breaks, with all Happy's clothes
tied firmly to the saddle. Happy Jack sighed lugubriously when he
remembered how firmly. A fleeting hope that, if he followed the trail
of Stranger, he might glean a garment or two that had slipped loose,
died almost before it lived. Happy Jack knew too well the kind of
knots he always tied. His favorite boast that nothing ever worked
loose on his saddle, came back now to mock him with its absolute
truth.
The sun, dropping a bit lower, robbed him inch by inch of the shade to
which he clung foolishly. He hunched himself into as small a space as
his big frame would permit, and hung his hat upon his knees where they
stuck out into the sunlight. It was very hot, and his position was
cramped, but he would not go yet; he was still thinking--and the brain
of Happy Jack worked ever slowly. In such an unheard-of predicament he
felt dimly that he had need of much thought.
When not even his hat could shield him from the sun glare, he got up
and went nipping awkwardly over the hot beach. He was going into the
next river-bottom--wherever that was--on the chance of finding a
cow-camp, or some cabin where he could, by some means, clothe himself.
He did not like the idea of facing the Happy Family in his present
condition; he knew the Happy Family. Perhaps he might find someone
living down here next the river. He hoped so--for Happy Jack, when
things were so bad they could not well be worse, was forced to give
over the prediction of further evil, and pursue blindly the faintest
whisper of hope. He got up on the bank, where the grass was kinder to
his unaccustomed feet than were the hot stones below, and hurried away
with his back to the sun, that scorched him cruelly.
In the next bottom--and he was long getting to it--the sage brush grew
dishearteningly thick. Happy began to be afraid of snakes. He went
slowly, stepping painfully where the ground seemed smoothest; he never
could walk fifteen miles in his bare feet, he owned dismally to
himself. His only hope lay in getting clothes.
Halfway down the bottom, he joyfully came upon a camp, but it had long
been deserted; from the low, tumble-down corrals, and the unmistakable
atmosphere of the place, Happy Jack knew it for a sheep camp. But
nothing save the musty odor and the bare cabin walls seemed to have
been left behind. He searched gloomily, thankful for the brief shade
the cabin offered. Then, tossed up on the rafters and forgotten, he
discovered a couple of dried sheep pelts, untanned and stiff, almost,
as shingles. Still, they were better than nothing, and he grinned in
sickly fashion at the find.
Realizing, in much pain, that some protection for his feet was an
absolute necessity, he tore a pelt in two for sandals. Much search
resulted in the discovery of a bit of rotted rope, which he unraveled
and thereby bound a piece of sheepskin upon each bruised foot. They
were not pretty, but they answered the purpose. The other pelt he
disposed of easily by tying the two front legs together around his
neck and letting the pelt hang down his back as far as it would reach.
There being nothing more that he could do in the way of
self-adornment, Happy Jack went out again into the hot afternoon. At
his best, Happy Jack could never truthfully be called handsome; just
now, clothed inadequately in gray Stetson hat and two meager
sheepskins, he looked scarce human.
Cheered a bit, he set out sturdily over the hills toward the mouth of
Suction Creek. The Happy Family would make all kinds of fools of
themselves, he supposed, if he showed up like this; but he might not
be obliged to appear before them in his present state of undress; he
might strike some other camp, first. Happy Jack was still forced to be
hopeful. He quite counted on striking another camp before reaching the
wagons of the Flying U.
The sun slid farther and farther toward the western rim of tumbled
ridges as Happy Jack, in his strange raiment, plodded laboriously to
the north. The mantle he was forced to shift constantly into a new
position as the sun's rays burned deep a new place, or the stiff hide
galled his blistered shoulders. The sandals did better, except that
the rotten strands of rope were continually wearing through on the
bottom, so that he must stop and tie fresh knots, or replace the bit
from the scant surplus which he had prudently brought along.
Till sundown he climbed toilfully up the steep hills and then
scrambled as toilfully into the coulees, taking the straightest course
he knew for the mouth of Suction Creek; that, as a last resort, while
he watched keenly for the white flake against green which would tell
of a tent pitched there in the wilderness. He was hungry--when he
forgot other discomforts long enough to think of it. Worst, perhaps,
was the way in which the gaunt sage brush scratched his unclothed legs
when he was compelled to cross a patch on some coulee bottom. Happy
Jack swore a great deal, in those long, heat-laden hours, and never
did he so completely belie the name men had in sarcasm given him.
Just when he was given over to the most gloomy forebodings, a white
square stood out for a moment sharply against a background of pines,
far below him in a coulee where the sun was peering fleetingly before
it dove out of sight over a hill. Happy Jack--of a truth, the most
unhappy Jack one could find, though he searched far and long--stood
still and eyed the white patch critically. There was only the one; but
another might be hidden in the trees. Still, there was no herd grazing
anywhere in the coulee, and no jingle of cavvy bells came to his ears,
though he listened long. He was sure that it was not the camp of the
Flying U, where he would be ministered unto faithfully, to be sure,
yet where the ministrations would be mingled with much wit-sharpened
raillery harder even to bear than was his present condition of
sun-blisters and scratches. He thanked the Lord in sincere if
unorthodox terms, and went down the hill in long, ungraceful strides.
It was far down that hill, and it was farther across the coulee. Each
step grew more wearisome to Happy Jack, unaccustomed as he was to
using his own feet as a mode of travel. But away in the edge of the
pine grove were food and raiment, and a shelter from the night that
was creeping down on him with the hurried stealth of a mountain lion
after its quarry. He shifted the sheepskin mantle for the thousandth
time; this time he untied it from his galled shoulders and festooned
it modestly if unbecomingly about his middle.
Feeling sure of the unfailing hospitality of the rangeland, be the
tent-dweller whom he might, Happy Jack walked boldly through the soft,
spring twilight that lasts long in Montana, and up to the very door of
the tent. A figure--a female figure--slender and topped by thin face
and eyes sheltered behind glasses, rose up, gazed upon him in horror,
shrieked till one could hear her a mile, and fell backward into the
tent. Another female figure appeared, looked, and shrieked also--and
even louder than did the first. Happy Jack, with a squawk of dismay,
turned and flew incontinently afar into the dusk. A man's voice he
heard, shouting inquiry; another, shouting what, from a distance,
sounded like threats. Happy Jack did not wait to make sure; he ran
blindly, until he brought up in a patch of prickly-pear, at which he
yelled, forgetting for the instant that he was pursued. Somehow he
floundered out and away from the torture of the stinging spines, and
took to the hills. A moon, big as the mouth of a barrel, climbed over
a ridge and betrayed him to the men searching below, and they shouted
and fired a gun. Happy Jack did not believe they could shoot very
straight, but he was in no mood to take chances; he sought refuge
among a jumble of great, gray bowlders; sat himself down in the shadow
and caressed gingerly the places where the prickly-pear had punctured
his skin, and gave himself riotously over to blasphemy.
The men below were prowling half-heartedly, it seemed to him--as if
they were afraid of running upon him too suddenly. It came to him that
they were afraid of him--and he grinned feebly at the joke. He had not
before stopped to consider his appearance, being concerned with more
important matters. Now, however, as he pulled the scant covering of
the pelt over his shoulders to keep off the chill of the night, he
could not wonder that the woman at the tent had fainted. Happy Jack
suspected shrewdly that he could, in that rig, startle almost any one.
He watched the coulee wistfully. They were making fires, down there
below him; great, revealing bonfires at intervals that would make it
impossible to pass their line unseen. He could not doubt that some one
was _cached_ in the shadows with a gun. There were more than two men;
Happy Jack thought that there must be at least four or five. He would
have liked to go down, just out of gun range, and shout explanations
and a request for some clothes--only for the women. Happy was always
ill at ease in the presence of strange women, and he felt, just now,
quite unequal to the ordeal of facing those two. He sat huddled in the
shadow of a rock and wished profanely that women would stay at home
and not go camping out in the Badlands, where their presence was
distinctly inappropriate and undesirable. If the men down there were
alone, he felt sure that he could make them understand. Seeing they
were not alone, however, he stayed where he was and watched the fires,
while his teeth chattered with cold and his stomach ached with the
hunger he could not appease.
Till daylight he sat there unhappily and watched the unwinking
challenge of the flames below, and miserably wished himself elsewhere;
even the jibes of the Happy Family would be endurable, so long as he
had the comfort afforded by the Flying U camp. But that was miles
away. And when daylight brought warmth and returning courage, he went
so far as to wish the Flying U camp farther away than it probably was.
He wanted to get somewhere, and ask help from strangers rather than
those he knew best.
With that idea fixed in his mind, he got stiffly to his bruised feet,
readjusted the sheepskin and began wearily to climb higher. When the
sun tinged all the hilltops golden yellow, he turned and shook his
fist impotently at the camp far beneath him. Then he went on doggedly.
Standing at last on a high peak, he looked away toward the sunrise and
made out a white speck on a grassy side-hill; beside it, a gray square
moved slowly over the green. Sheep, and a sheep camp--and Happy Jack,
hater of sheep though he was, hailed the sight as a bit of rare good
luck. His spirits rose immediately, and he started straight for the
place.
Down in the next coulee--there were always coulees to cross, no matter
in what direction one would travel--he came near running plump into
three riders, who were Irish Mallory, and Weary, and Pink. They were
riding down from the direction of the camp where were the women, and
they caught sight of him immediately and gave chase. Happy Jack had no
mind to be rounded up by that trio; he dodged into the bushes, and
though they dug long, unmerciful scratches in his person, clung to the
shelter they gave and made off at top speed. He could hear the others
shouting at one another as they galloped here and there trying to
locate him, and he skulked where the bushes were deepest, like a
criminal in fear of lynching.
Luck, for once, was with him, and he got out into another
brush-fringed coulee without being seen, and felt himself, for the
present, safe from that portion of the Happy Family. Thereafter he
avoided religiously the higher ridges, and kept the direction more by
instinct than by actual knowledge. The sun grew hot again and he
hurried on, shifting the sheepskin as the need impressed.
When at last he sighted again the sheep, they were very close. Happy
Jack grew cautious; he crept down upon the unsuspecting herder as
stealthily as an animal hunting its breakfast. Herders sometimes carry
guns--and the experience of last night burned hot in his memory.
Slipping warily from rock to rock, he was within a dozen feet, when a
dog barked and betrayed his presence. The herder did not have a gun.
He gave a yell of pure terror and started for camp after his weapon.
Happy Jack, yelling also, with long leaps followed after. Twice the
herder looked over his shoulder at the weird figure in gray hat and
flapping sheepskin, and immediately after each glance his pace
increased perceptibly. Still Happy Jack, desperate beyond measure,
doggedly pursued, and his long legs lessened at each jump the distance
between. From a spectacular viewpoint, it must have been a pretty
race.
The herder, with a gasp, dove into the tent; into the tent Happy Jack
dove after him--and none too soon. The hand of the herder had almost
clasped his rifle when the weight of Happy bore him shrieking to the
earthen floor.
"Aw, yuh locoed old fool, shut up, can't yuh, a minute?" Happy Jack,
with his fingers pressed against the windpipe of the other, had the
satisfaction of seeing his request granted at once. The shrieks died
to mere gurgling. "What I want uh _you_," Happy went on crossly,
"ain't your lifeblood, yuh dam' Swede idiot. I want some clothes, and
some grub; and I want to borry that pinto I seen picketed out in the
hollow, down there. Now, will yuh let up that yelling and act white,
or must I pound some p'liteness into yuh? Say!"
"By damn, Ay tank yo' vas got soom crazy," apologized the herder
humbly, sanity growing in his pale blue eyes. "Ay tank--"
"Oh, I don't give a cuss what you _tank_," Happy Jack cut in. "I ain't
had anything to eat sence yesterday forenoon, and I ain't had any
clothes on sence yesterday, either. Send them darn dogs back to watch
your sheep, and get busy with breakfast! I've got a lot to do, t'-day.
I've got to round up my horse and get my clothes that's tied to the
saddle, and get t' where I'm going. Get up, darn yuh! I ain't going t'
eat yuh--not unless you're too slow with that grub."
The herder was submissive and placating, and permitted Happy Jack to
appropriate the conventional garb of a male human, the while coffee
and bacon were maddening his hunger with their tantalizing odor. He
seemed much more at ease, once he saw that Happy Jack, properly
clothed, was not particularly fearsome to look upon, and talked
volubly while he got out bread and stewed prunes and boiled beans for
the thrice-unexpected guest.
Happy Jack, clothed and fed, became himself again and prophesied
gloomily: "The chances is, that horse uh mine'll be forty miles away
and still going, by this time; but soon as I can round him up, I'll
bring your pinto back. Yuh needn't t' worry none; I guess I got all
the sense I've ever had."
Once more astride a horse--albeit the pinto pony of a
sheepherder--Happy Jack felt abundantly able to cope with the
situation. He made a detour that put him far from where the three he
most dreaded to meet were apt to be, and struck out at the pinto's
best pace for the river at the point where he had crossed so
disastrously the day before.
Having a good memory for directions and localities, he easily found
the place of unhappy memory; and taking up Stranger's trail through
the sand from there, he got the general direction of his flight and
followed vengefully after; rode for an hour up a long, grassy coulee,
and came suddenly upon the fugitive feeding quietly beside a spring.
The bundle of clothing was still tied firmly to the saddle, and at
sight of it the face of Happy Jack relaxed somewhat from its gloom.
When Happy rode up and cast a loop over his head Stranger nickered a
bit, as if he did not much enjoy freedom while he yet bore the
trappings of servitude. And his submission was so instant and
voluntary that Happy Jack had not the heart to do as he had threatened
many times in the last few hours--"to beat the hide off him." Instead,
he got hastily into his clothes--quite as if he feared they might
again be whisked away from him--and then rubbed forgivingly the nose
of Stranger, and solicitously pulled a few strands of his forelock
from under the brow-band. In the heart of Happy Jack was a great
peace, marred only by the physical discomforts of much sun-blister and
many deep scratches. After that he got thankfully into his own saddle
and rode gladly away, leading the pinto pony behind him. He had got
out of the scrape, and the Happy Family would never find it out; it
was not likely that they would chance upon the Swede herder, or if
they did, that they would exchange with him many words. The Happy
Family held itself physically, mentally, morally and socially far
above sheepherders--and in that lay the safety of Happy Jack.
It was nearly noon when he reached again the sheep camp, and the Swede
hospitably urged him to stay and eat with him; but Happy Jack would
not tarry, for he was anxious to reach the camp of the Flying U. A
mile from the herder's camp he saw again on a distant hilltop three
familiar figures. This time he did not dodge into shelter, but urged
Stranger to a gallop and rode boldly toward them. They greeted him
joyfully and at the top of their voices when he came within shouting
distance.
"How comes it you're riding the pinnacles over here?" Weary wanted to
know, as soon as he rode alongside.
"Aw, I just came over after more orders; hope they send somebody else
over there, if they want any more repping done," Happy Jack said, in
his customary tone of discontent with circumstances.
"Say! Yuh didn't see anything of a wild man, down next the river, did
yuh?" put in Pink.
"Aw, gwan! what wild man?" Happy Jack eyed them suspiciously.
"Honest, there's a wild man ranging around here in these hills," Pink
declared. "We've been mooching around all forenoon, hunting him. Got
sight of him, early this morning, but he got away in the brush."
Happy Jack looked guilty, and even more suspicious. Was it possible
that they had recognized him?
"The way we come to hear about him," Weary explained, "we happened
across some campers, over in a little coulee to the west uh here. They
was all worked up over him. Seems he went into camp last night, and
like to scared the ladies into fits. He ain't got enough clothes on to
flag an antelope, according to them, and he's about seven feet high,
and looks more like a missing link than a plain, ordinary man. The one
that didn't faint away got the best look at him, and she's ready to
take oath he ain't more'n half human. They kept fires burning all
night to scare him out uh the coulee, and they're going to break camp
to-day and hike for home. They say he give a screech that'd put a
crimp in the devil himself, and went galloping off, jumping about
twenty feet at a lick. And--"
"Aw, gwan!" protested Happy Jack, feebly.
"So help me Josephine, it's the truth," abetted Pink, round-eyed and
unmistakably in earnest. "We wouldn't uh taken much stock in it,
either, only we saw him ourselves, not more than two hundred yards
off. He was just over the hill from the coulee where they were camped,
so it's bound to be the same animal. It's a fact, he didn't have much
covering--just something hung over his shoulders. And he was sure
wild, for soon as he seen us he humped himself and got into the brush.
We could hear him go crashing away like a whole bunch of elephants.
It's a damn' shame he got away on us," Pink sighed regretfully. "We
was going to rope him and put him in a cage; we could sure uh made
money on him, at two bits a look."
Happy Jack continued to eye the three distrustfully. Too often had he
been the victim of their humor for him now to believe implicitly in
their ignorance. It was too good to be real, it seemed to him. Still,
if by any good luck it _were_ real, he hated to think what would
happen if they ever found out the truth. He eased the clothing
cautiously away from his smarting back, and stared hard into a coulee.
"It was likely some sheepherder gone clean nutty," mused Irish.
"Well, the most uh them wouldn't have far to go," ventured Happy Jack,
thinking of the Swede.
"What we ought to do," said Pink, keen for the chase, "is for the
whole bunch of us to come down here and round him up. Wonder if we
couldn't talk Chip into laying off for a day or so; there's no herd to
hold. I sure would like to get a good look at him."
"Somebody ought to take him in," observed Irish longingly. "He ain't
safe, running around loose like that. There's no telling what he might
do. The way them campers read his brand, he's plumb dangerous to meet
up with alone. It's lucky you didn't run onto him, Happy."
"Well, I didn't," growled Happy Jack. "And what's more, I betche there
ain't any such person."
"Don't call us liars to our faces, Happy," Weary reproved. "We told
yuh, a dozen times, that we saw him ourselves. Yuh might be polite
enough to take our word for it."
"Aw, gwan!" Happy Jack grunted, still not quite sure of how much--or
how little--they knew. While they discussed further the wild man, he
watched furtively for the surreptitious lowering of lids that would
betray their insincerity. When they appealed to him for an opinion of
some phase of the subject, he answered with caution. He tried to turn
the talk to his experiences on the Shonkin range, and found the wild
man cropping up with disheartening persistency. He shifted often in
the saddle, because of the deep sunburns which smarted continually and
maddeningly. He wondered if the boys had used all of that big box of
carbolic salve which used to be kept in a corner of the mess-box; and
was carbolic salve good for sun-blisters? He told himself gloomily
that if there was any of it left, and if it were good for his ailment,
there wouldn't be half enough of it, anyway. He estimated unhappily
that he would need about two quarts.
When they reached camp, the welcome of Happy Jack was overshadowed and
made insignificant by the strange story of the wild man. Happy Jack,
mentally and physically miserable, was forced to hear it all told over
again, and to listen to the excited comments of the others. He was
sick of the subject. He had heard enough about the wild man, and he
wished fervently that they would shut up about it. He couldn't see
that it was anything to make such a fuss about, anyway. And he wished
he could get his hands on that carbolic salve, without having the
whole bunch rubbering around and asking questions about something that
was none of their business. He even wished, in that first bitter hour
after he had eaten and while they were lying idly in the shady spots,
that he was back on the Shonkin range with an alien crew.
It was perhaps an hour later that Pink, always of an investigative
turn of mind, came slipping quietly up through the rose bushes from
the creek. The Happy Family, lying luxuriously upon the grass, were
still discussing the latest excitement. Pink watched his chance and
when none but Weary observed him jerked his head mysteriously toward
the creek.
Weary got up, yawned ostentatiously, and sauntered away in the wake of
Pink. "What's the matter, Cadwolloper?" he asked, when he was close
enough. "Seen a garter snake?" Pink was notoriously afraid of snakes.
"You come with me, and I'll show yuh the wild man," he grinned.
"Mama!" ejaculated Weary, and followed stealthily where Pink led.
Some distance up the creek Pink signalled caution, and they crept like
Indians on hands and knees through the grass. On the edge of the high
bank they stopped, and Pink motioned. Weary looked over and came near
whooping at the sight below. He gazed a minute, drew back and put his
face close to the face of Pink.
"Cadwolloper, go get the bunch!" he commanded in a whisper, and Pink,
again signalling needlessly for silence, slipped hastily away from the
spot.
Happy Jack, secure in the seclusion offered by the high bank of the
creek, ran his finger regretfully around the inside of the carbolic
salve box, eyed the result dissatisfiedly, and applied the finger
carefully to a deep cut on his knee. He had got that cut while going
up the bluff, just after leaving the tent where had been the shrieking
females. He wished there was more salve, and he picked up the cover of
the box and painstakingly wiped out the inside; the result was
disheartening.
He examined his knee dolefully. It was beginning to look inflamed, and
it was going to make him limp. He wondered if the boys would notice
anything queer about his walk. If they did, there was the conventional
excuse that his horse had fallen down with him--Happy Jack hoped that
it would be convincing. He took up the box again and looked at the
shining emptiness of it. It had been half full--not enough, by a long
way--and maybe some one would wonder what had become of it. Darn a
bunch that always had to know everything, anyway!
Happy Jack, warned at last by that unnamed instinct which tells of a
presence unseen, turned around and looked up apprehensively. The Happy
Family, sitting in a row upon their heels on the bank, looked down at
him gravely and appreciatively.
"There's a can uh wagon dope, up at camp," Cal Emmett informed him
sympathetically.
"Aw--" Happy Jack began, and choked upon his humiliation.
"I used to know a piece uh poetry about a fellow like Happy," Weary
remarked sweetly. "It said
_'He raised his veil, the maid turned slowly round_
_Looked at him, shrieked, and fell upon the ground.'_
Only, in this case," Weary smiled blandly down upon him, "Happy didn't
have no veil."
"Aw, gwan!" adjured Happy Jack helplessly, and reached for his
clothes, while the Happy Family chorused a demand for explanations.
* * * * *
A TAMER OF WILD ONES.
When the days grow crisp at each end and languorous in the middle;
when a haze ripples the skyline like a waving ribbon of faded blue;
when the winds and the grasses stop and listen for the first on-rush
of winter, then it is that the rangeland takes on a certain
intoxicating unreality, and range-wild blood leaps with desire to do
something--anything, so it is different and irresponsible and not
measured by precedent or prudence.
In days like that one grows venturesome and ignores difficulties and
limitations with a fine disregard for probable consequences, a mental
snapping of fingers. On a day like that, the Happy Family, riding
together out of Dry Lake with the latest news in mind and speech,
urged Andy Green, tamer of wild ones, to enter the rough-riding
contest exploited as one of the features of the Northern Montana Fair,
to be held at Great Falls in two weeks. Pink could not enter, because
a horse had fallen with him and hurt his leg, so that he was picking
the gentlest in his string for daily riding. Weary would not, because
he had promised his Little Schoolma'am to take care of himself and not
take any useless risks; even the temptation of a two-hundred-dollar
purse could not persuade him that a rough-riding contest is perfectly
safe and without the ban. But Andy, impelled by the leaping blood of
him and urged by the loyal Family, consented and said he'd try it a
whirl, anyway.
They had only ridden four or five miles when the decision was reached,
and they straightway turned back and raced into Dry Lake again, so
that Andy might write the letter that clinched matters. Then, whooping
with the sheer exhilaration of living, and the exultation of being
able to ride and whoop unhindered, they galloped back to camp and let
the news spread as it would. In a week all Chouteau County knew that
Andy Green would ride for the purse, and nearly all Chouteau County
backed him with all the money it could command; certainly, all of it
that knew Andy Green and had seen him ride, made haste to find someone
who did not know him and whose faith in another contestant was strong,
and to bet all the money it could lay hands upon.
For Andy was one of those mild-mannered men whose genius runs to
riding horses which object violently to being ridden; one of those
lucky fellows who never seems to get his neck broken, however much he
may jeopardize it; and, moreover, he was that rare genius, who can
make a "pretty" ride where other broncho-fighters resemble nothing so
much as a scarecrow in a cyclone. Andy not only could ride--he could
ride gracefully. And the reason for that, not many knew: Andy, in the
years before he wandered to the range, had danced, in spangled tights,
upon the broad rump of a big gray horse which galloped around a
saw-dust ring with the regularity of movement that suggested a
machine, while a sober-clothed man in the center cracked a whip and
yelped commands. Andy had jumped through blazing hoops and over
sagging bunting while he rode--and he was just a trifle ashamed of the
fact. Also--though it does not particularly matter--he had, later in
the performance, gone hurtling around the big tent dressed in the garb
of an ancient Roman and driving four deep-chested bays abreast. As has
been explained, he never boasted of his circus experience; though his
days in spangled tights probably had much to do with the inimitable
grace of him in the saddle. The Happy Family felt to a man that Andy
would win the purse and add honor to the Flying U in the winning. They
were enthusiastic over the prospect and willing to bet all they had on
the outcome.
* * * * *
The Happy Family, together with the aliens who swelled the crew to
round-up size, was foregathered at the largest Flying U corral,
watching a bunch of newly bought horses circle, with much snorting and
kicking up of dust, inside the fence. It was the interval between
beef-and calf-roundups, and the witchery of Indian Summer held the
range-land in thrall.
Andy, sizing up the bunch and the brands, lighted upon a rangy blue
roan that he knew--or thought he knew, and the eyes of him brightened
with desire. If he could get that roan in his string, he told himself,
he could go to sleep in the saddle on night-guard; for an easier horse
to ride he never had straddled. It was like sitting in grandma's pet
rocking chair when that roan loosened his muscles for a long, tireless
gallop over the prairie sod, and as a stayer Andy had never seen his
equal. It was not his turn to choose, however, and he held his breath
lest the rope of another should settle over the slatey-black ears
ahead of him.
Cal Emmett roped a plump little black and led him out, grinning
satisfaction; from the white saddle-marks back of the withers he knew
him for a "broke" horse, and he certainly was pretty to look at. Andy
gave him but a fleeting glance.
Happy Jack spread his loop and climbed down from the fence, almost at
Andy's elbow. It was his turn to choose. "I betche that there blue
roan over there is a good one," he remarked. "I'm going to tackle
him."
Andy took his cigarette from between his lips. "Yuh better hobble your
stirrups, then," he discouraged artfully. "I know that roan a heap
better than you do."
"Aw, gwan!" Happy, nevertheless, hesitated. "He's got a kind eye in
his head; yuh can always go by a horse's eye."
"Can yuh?" Andy smiled indifferently. "Go after him, then. And say,
Happy: if yuh ride that blue roan for five successive minutes, I'll
give yuh fifty dollars. I knew that hoss down on the Musselshell; he's
got a record that'd reach from here to Dry Lake and back." It was a
bluff, pure and simple, born of his covetousness, but it had the
desired effect--or nearly so.
Happy fumbled his rope and eyed the roan. "Aw, I betche you're just
lying," he hazarded; but, like many another, when he did strike the
truth he failed to recognize it. "I betche--"
"All right, rope him out and climb on, if yuh don't believe me." The
tone of Andy was tinged with injury. "There's fifty dollars--yes, by
gracious, I'll give yuh a _hundred_ dollars if yuh ride him for five
minutes straight."
A conversation of that character, carried on near the top of two
full-lunged voices, never fails in the range land to bring an audience
of every male human within hearing. All other conversations and
interests were immediately suspended, and a dozen men trotted up to
see what it was all about. Andy remained roosting upon the top rail,
his rope coiled loosely and dangling from one arm while he smoked
imperturbably.
"Oh, Happy was going to rope out a sure-enough bad one for his night
hoss, and out uh the goodness uh my heart, I put him wise to what he
was going up against," he explained carelessly.
"He acts like he has some thoughts uh doubting my word, so I just
offered him a hundred dollars to ride him--that blue roan, over there
next that crooked post. GET_ a reserved seat right in front of the
grand stand where all the big acts take_ PLACE;" he sung out suddenly,
in the regulation circus tone. "GET-a-seat-right-in-front-where-Happy-Jack-
the-WILD-Man-rides-the-BUCKING-BRONCHO--Go on, Happy. Don't keep the
audience waiting. Aren't yuh going to earn that hundred dollars?"
Happy Jack turned half a shade redder than was natural. "Aw, gwan. I
never said I was going to do no broncho-busting ack. But I betche yuh
never seen that roan before he was unloaded in Dry Lake."
"What'll yuh bet I don't know that hoss from a yearling colt?" Andy
challenged, and Happy Jack walked away without replying, and cast his
loop sullenly over the first horse he came to--which was _not_ the
roan.
Chip, coming up to hear the last of it, turned and looked long at the
horse in question; a mild-mannered horse, standing by a crooked corral
post and flicking his ears at the flies. "Do you know that roan?" he
asked Andy, in the tone which brings truthful answer. Andy had one
good point: he never lied except in an irresponsible mood of pure
deviltry. For instance, he never had lied seriously, to an employer.
"Sure, I know that hoss," he answered truthfully.
"Did you ever ride him?"
"No," Andy admitted, still truthfully. "I never rode him but once
myself, but I worked right with a Lazy 6 rep that had him in his
string, down at the U up-and-down, two years ago. I know the hoss, all
right; but I did lie when I told Happy I knowed him from a colt. I
spread it on a little bit thick, there." He smiled engagingly down at
Chip.
"And he's a bad one, is he?" Chip queried Over his shoulder, just as
he was about to walk away.
"Well," Andy prevaricated--still clinging to the letter, if not to the
spirit of truth. "He ain't a hoss I'd like to see Happy Jack go up
against. I ain't saying, though, that he can't be _rode_. I don't say
that about _any_ hoss."
"Is he any worse than Glory, when Glory is feeling peevish?" Weary
asked, when Chip was gone and while the men still lingered. Andy,
glancing to make sure that Chip was out of hearing, threw away his
cigarette and yielded to temptation. "Glory?" he snorted with a fine
contempt. "Why, Glory's--a--_lamb_ beside that blue roan! Why, that
hoss throwed Buckskin Jimmy clean out of a corral--Did yuh ever see
Buckskin Jimmy ride? Well, say, yuh missed a pretty sight, then;
Jimmy's a sure-enough rider. About the only animal he ever failed to
connect with for keeps, is that same cow-backed hoss yuh see over
there. Happy says he's got a kind eye in his head--" Andy stopped and
laughed till they all laughed with him. "By gracious, Happy ought to
step up _on_ him, once, and see how _kind_ he is!" He laughed again
until Happy, across the corral saddling the horse he had chosen,
muttered profanely at the derision he knew was pointed at himself.
"Why, I've seen that hoss--" Andy Green, once fairly started in the
fascinating path of romance, invented details for the pure joy of
creation. If he had written some of the tales he told, and had sold
the writing for many dollars, he would have been famous. Since he did
not write them for profit, but told them for fun, instead, he earned
merely the reputation of being a great liar. A significant mark of his
genius lay in the fact that his inventions never failed to convince;
not till afterward did his audience doubt.
That is why the blue roan was not chosen in any of the strings, but
was left always circling in the corral after a loop had settled. That
is why the Flying U boys looked at him askance as they passed him by.
That is why, when a certain Mr. Coleman, sent by the board of
directors to rake northern Montana for bad horses, looked with favor
upon the blue roan when he came to the Flying U ranch and heard the
tale of his exploits as interpreted--I should say created--by Andy
Green.
"We've got to have him," he declared enthusiastically. "If he's as bad
as all that, he'll be the star performer at the contest, and make that
two-hundred-dollar plum a hard one to pick. Some of these gay boys
have entered with the erroneous idea that that same plum is hanging
loose, and all they've got to do is lean up against the tree and it'll
drop in their mouths. We've got to have that roan. I'll pay you a good
price for him, Whitmore, if you won't let him go any other way. We've
got a reporter up there that can do him up brown in a special article,
and people will come in bunches to see a horse with that kind of a
pedigree. Is it Green, here, that knows the horse and what he'll do?
You're sure of him, are you, Green?"
Andy took time to roll a cigarette. He had not expected any such
development as this, and he needed to think of the best way out. All
he had wanted or intended was to discourage the others from claiming
the blue roan; he wanted him in his own string. Afterwards, when they
had pestered him about the roan's record, he admitted to himself that
he had, maybe, overshot the mark and told it a bit too scarey, and too
convincingly. Under the spell of fancy he had done more than make the
roan unpopular as a roundup horse; he had made him a celebrity in the
way of outlaw horses. And they wanted him in the rough-riding contest!
Andy, perhaps, had never before been placed in just such a position.
"Are you sure of what the horse will do?" Mr. Coleman repeated, seeing
that Andy was taking a long time to reply.
Andy licked his cigarette, twisted an end and leaned backward while he
felt in his pocket for a match. From the look of his face you never
could have told how very uncomfortable he felt "Naw," he drawled. "I
ain't never sure of what _any_ hoss will do. I've had too much
dealings with 'em for any uh that brand uh foolishness." He lighted
the cigarette as if that were the only matter in which he took any
real interest, though he was thinking fast.
Mr. Coleman looked nonplussed. "But I thought--you said--"
"What I said," Andy retorted evenly, "hit the blue roan two years ago;
maybe he's reformed since then; I dunno. Nobody's rode him, here." He
could not resist a sidelong glance at Happy Jack. "There was some talk
of it, but it never come to a head."
"Yuh offered me a hundred dollars--" Happy Jack began accusingly.
"And yuh never made no move to earn it, that I know of. By gracious,
yuh all seem to think I ought to _mind_-read that hoss! I ain't seen
him for two years. Maybe so, he's a real wolf yet; maybe so, he's a
sheep." He threw out both his hands to point the end of the
argument--so far as he was concerned--stuck them deep into his
trousers' pockets and walked away before he could be betrayed into
deeper deceit. It did seem to him rather hard that, merely because he
had wanted the roan badly enough to--er--exercise a little diplomacy
in order to get him, they should keep harping on the subject like
that. And to have Coleman making medicine to get the roan into that
contest was, to say the least, sickening. Andy's private belief was
that a twelve-year-old girl could go round up the milk-cows on that
horse. He had never known him to make a crooked move, and he had
ridden beside him all one summer and had seen him in all places and
under all possible conditions. He was a dandy cow-horse, and dead
gentle; all this talk made him tired. Andy had forgotten that he
himself had started the talk.
Coleman went often to the corral when the horses were in, and looked
at the blue roan. Later he rode on to other ranches where he had heard
were bad horses, and left the roan for further consideration. When he
was gone, Andy breathed freer and put his mind to the coming contest
and the things he meant to do with the purse and with the other
contestants.
"That Diamond G twister is going t' ride," Happy Jack announced, one
day when he came from town. "Some uh the boys was in town and they
said so. He can ride, too. I betche Andy don't have no picnic gitting
the purse away from _that_ feller. And Coleman's got that sorrel
outlaw uh the HS. I betche Andy'll have to pull leather on that one."
This was, of course, treason pure and simple; but Happy Jack's
prophecies were never taken seriously.
Andy simply grinned at him. "Put your money on the Diamond G twister,"
he advised calmly. "I know him--he's a good rider, too. His name's
Billy Roberts. Uh course, I aim to beat him to it, but Happy never
does like to have a sure-thing. He wants something to hang his jaw
down over. Put your money on Billy and watch it fade away, Happy."
"Aw, gwan. I betche that there sorrel--"
"I rode that there sorrel once, and combed his forelock with both
spurs alternate," Andy lied boldly. "He's pickings. Take him back and
bring me a real hoss."
Happy Jack wavered. "Well, I betche yuh don't pull down that money,"
he predicted vaguely. "I betche yuh git throwed, or something. It
don't do to be too blame sure uh nothing."
Whereat Andy laughed derisively and went away whistling. "I wish I was
as sure uh living till I was a thousand years old, and able to ride
nine months out of every year of 'em," he called back to Happy. Then
he took up the tune where he had left off.
For the days were still crisp at both ends and languorous in the
middle, and wind and grasses hushed and listened for the coming of
winter. And because of these things, and his youth and his health, the
heart of Andy Green was light in his chest and trouble stood afar off
with its face turned from him.
It was but three days to the opening of the fair when Coleman,
returning that way from his search for bad horses, clattered, with his
gleanings and three or four men to help drive them, down the grade to
the Flying U. And in the Flying U coulee, just across the creek from
the corrals, still rested the roundup tents for a space. For the
shipping was over early and work was not urgent, and Chip and the Old
Man, in their enthusiasm for the rough-riding contest and the entry of
their own man, had decided to take the wagons and crew entire to Great
Falls and camp throughout the four days of the fair. The boys all
wanted to go, anyway, as did everybody else, so that nothing could be
done till it was over. It was a novel idea, and it tickled the humor
of the Happy Family.
The "rough string," as the bad horses were called, was corralled, and
the men made merry with the roundup crew. Diamond G men they were,
loudly proclaiming their faith in Billy Roberts, and offering bets
already against Andy, who listened undisturbed and had very little to
say. The Happy Family had faith in him, and that was enough. If
everybody, he told them, believed that he would win, where would be
the fun of riding and showing them?
It was after their early supper that Coleman came down to camp at the
heels of Chip and the Old Man. Straightway he sought out Andy like a
man who has something on his mind; though Andy did not in the least
know what it was, he recognized the indefinable symptoms and braced
himself mentally, half suspecting that it was something about that
blue roan again. He was getting a little bit tired of the blue
roan--enough so that, though he had chosen him for his string, he had
not yet put saddle to his back, but waited until the roundup started
out once more, when he would ride him in his turn.
It was the blue roan, without doubt. Coleman came to a stop directly
in front of Andy, and as directly came to the point.
"Look here, Green," he began. "I'm shy on horses for that contest, and
Whitmore and Bennett say I can have that roan you've got in your
string. If he's as bad as you claim, I certainly must have him. But
you seem to have some doubts of what he'll do, and I'd like to see him
ridden once. Your shingle is out as a broncho-peeler. Will you ride
him this evening, so I can size him up for that contest?"
Andy glanced up under his eyebrows, and then sidelong at the crowd.
Every man within hearing was paying strict attention, and was eyeing
him expectantly; for broncho-fighting is a spectacle that never palls.
"Well, I can ride him, if yuh say so," Andy made cautious answer, "but
I won't gamble he's a bad hoss _now_--that is, bad enough to take to
the Falls. Yuh don't want to expect--"
"Oh, I don't expect anything--only I want to see him ridden once. Come
on, no time like the present. If he's bad, you'll have to ride him at
the fair, anyhow, and a little practice won't hurt you; and if he
isn't, I want to know it for sure."
"It's a go with me," Andy said indifferently, though he secretly felt
much relief. The roan would go off like a pet dog, and he could
pretend to be somewhat surprised, and declare that he had reformed.
Bad horses do reform, sometimes, as Andy and every other man in the
crowd knew. Then there would be no more foolish speculation about the
cayuse, and Andy could keep him in peace and have a mighty good
cow-pony, as he had schemed. He smoked a cigarette while Chip was
having the horses corralled, and then led the way willingly, with
twenty-five men following expectantly at his heels. Unlike Andy, they
fully expected an impromptu exhibition of fancy riding. Not all of
them had seen Andy atop a bad horse, and the Diamond G men, in
particular, were eager to witness a sample of his skill.
The blue roan submitted to the rope, and there was nothing spectacular
in the saddling. Andy kept his cigarette between his lips and smiled
to himself when he saw the saddle bunch hazed out through the gate and
the big corral left empty of every animal but the blue roan, as was
customary when a man tackled a horse with the record which he had
given the poor beast. Also, the sight of twenty-five men roosting
high, their boot-heels hooked under a corral rail to steady them,
their faces writ large with expectancy, amused him inwardly. He
pictured their disappointment when the roan trotted around the corral
once or twice at his bidding, and smiled again.
"If you can't top him, Green, we'll send for Billy Roberts. _He'll_
take off the rough edge and gentle him down for yuh," taunted a
Diamond G man.
"Don't get excited till the show starts," Andy advised, holding the
cigarette in his fingers while he emptied his lungs of smoke. Just to
make a pretence of caution, he shook the saddle tentatively by the
horn, and wished the roan would make a little show of resistance,
instead of standing there like an old cow, lacking only the cud, as he
complained to himself, to make the resemblance complete. The roan,
however, did lay back an ear when Andy, the cigarette again in his
lips, put his toe in the stirrup.
"Go after it, you weatherbeaten old saw-buck," he yelled, just to make
the play strong, before he was fairly in the saddle.
Then it was that the Happy Family, heart and soul and pocket all for
Andy Green and his wonderful skill in the saddle; with many dollars
backing their belief in him and with voices ever ready to sing his
praises; with the golden light of early sunset all about them and the
tang of coming night-frost in the air, received a shock that made them
turn white under their tan.
"Mama!" breathed Weary, in a horrified half-whisper.
And Slim, goggle-eyed beside him, blurted, "Well, by _golly_!" in a
voice that carried across the corral.
For Andy Green, tamer of wild ones (forsooth!) broncho-twister with a
fame that not the boundary of Chouteau County held, nor yet the
counties beyond; Andy Green, erstwhile "André de Gréno, champion
bare-back rider of the Western Hemisphere," who had jumped through
blazing hoops and over sagging bunting while he rode, turned
handsprings and done other public-drawing feats, was prosaically,
unequivocally "piled" at the fifth jump!
That he landed lightly on his feet, with the cigarette still between
his lips, the roosting twenty-five quite overlooked. They saw only the
first jump, where Andy, riding loose and unguardedly, went up on the
blue withers. The second, third and fourth jumps were not far enough
apart to be seen and judged separately; as well may one hope to decide
whether a whirling wheel had straight or crooked spokes. The fifth
jump, however, was a masterpiece of rapid-fire contortion, and it was
important because it left Andy on the ground, gazing, with an
extremely grieved expression, at the uninterrupted convolutions of the
"dandy little cow-hoss."
The blue roan never stopped so much as to look back. He was
busy--exceedingly busy. He was one of those perverted brutes which
buck and bawl and so keep themselves wrought up to a high
pitch--literally and figuratively. He set himself seriously to throw
Andy's saddle over his head, and he was not a horse which easily
accepts defeat. Andy walked around in the middle of the corral, quite
aimlessly, and watched the roan contort. He could not understand in
the least, and his amazement overshadowed, for the moment, the fact
that he had been thrown and that in public and before men of the
Diamond G.
Then it was that the men of the Diamond G yelled shrill words of
ironical sympathy. Then it was that the Happy Family looked at one
another in shamed silence, and to the taunts of the Diamond Gs made no
reply. It had never occurred to them that such a thing could happen.
Had they not seen Andy ride, easily and often? Had they not heard from
Pink how Andy had performed that difficult feat at the Rocking R--the
feat of throwing his horse flat in the middle of a jump? They waited
until the roan, leaving the big corral looking, in the fast deepening
twilight, like a fresh-ploughed field, stopped dejectedly and stood
with his nose against the closed gate, and then climbed slowly down
from the top rail of the corral, still silent with the silence more
eloquent than speech in any known language.
Over by the gate, Andy was yanking savagely at the latigo; and he,
also, had never a word to say. He was still wondering how it had
happened. He looked the roan over critically and shook his head
against the riddle; for he had known him to be a quiet, dependable,
all-round good horse, with no bad traits and an easy-going disposition
that fretted at nothing. A high-strung, nervous beast might, from
rough usage and abuse, go "bad"; but the blue roan--they had called
him Pardner--had never showed the slightest symptom of nerves. Andy
knew horses as he knew himself. That a horse like Pardner should, in
two years, become an evil-tempered past-master in such devilish
pitching as that, was past belief.
"I guess he'll do, all right," spoke Coleman at his elbow. "I've seen
horses pitch, and I will say that he's got some specialties that are
worth exhibiting." Then, as a polite way of letting Andy down easy, he
added, "I don't wonder you couldn't connect."
"Connect--_hell_!" It was Andy's first realization of what his failure
meant to the others. He left off wondering about the roan, and faced
the fact that he had been thrown, fair and square, and that before an
audience of twenty-five pairs of eyes which had seen rough riding
before, and which had expected of him something better than they were
accustomed to seeing.
"I reckon Billy Roberts will have to work on that cayuse a while,"
fleered a Diamond G man, coming over to them. "He'll gentle him down
so that anybody--_even Green_, can ride him!"
Andy faced him hotly, opened his mouth for sharp reply, and closed it.
He had been "piled." Nothing that he could say might alter that fact,
nor explanations lighten the disgrace. He turned and went out the
gate, carrying his saddle and bridle with him.
"Aw--and you was goin' t' ride in that contest!" wailed Happy Jack
recriminatingly. "And I've got forty dollars up on yuh!"
"Shut up!" snapped Pink in his ear, heart-broken but loyal to the
last. "Yuh going to blat around and let them Diamond Gs give yuh the
laugh? Hunt up something you can use for a backbone till they get out
uh camp, for Heaven's sake! Andy's our man. So help me, Josephine, if
anybody goes rubbing it in where I can hear, he'll get his face
punched!"
"Say, I guess we ain't let down on our faces, or anything!" sighed Cal
Emmett, coming up to them. "I thought Andy could ride! Gee whiz, but
it was fierce! Why, _Happy_ could make a better ride than that!"
"By golly, I want t' have a talk with that there broncho-tamer," Slim
growled behind them. "I got money on him. Is he goin t' ride for that
purse? 'Cause if he is, I ain't going a foot."
These and other remarks of a like nature made up the clamor that
surged in the ears of Andy as he went, disgraced and alone, up to the
deserted bunk-house where he need not hear what they were saying. He
knew, deep in his heart, that he could ride that horse. He had been
thrown because of his own unpardonable carelessness--a carelessness
which he could not well explain to the others. He himself had given
the roan an evil reputation; a reputation that, so far as he knew, was
libel pure and simple. To explain now that he was thrown simply
because he never dreamed the horse would pitch, and so was taken
unaware, would simply be to insult their intelligence. He was not
supposed, after mounting a horse like that, to be taken unaware. He
might, of course, say that he had lied all along--but he had no
intention of making any confession like that. Even if he did, they
would not believe him. Altogether, it was a very unhappy young man who
slammed his spurs into a far corner and kicked viciously a box he had
stumbled over in the dusk.
"Trying to bust the furniture?" it was the voice of the Old Man at the
door.
"By gracious, it seems I can't bust _bronks_ no more," Andy made
rueful reply. "I reckon I'll just about have to bust the furniture or
nothing."
The Old Man chuckled and came inside, sought the box Andy had kicked,
and sat down upon it. Through the open door came the jumble of many
voices upraised in fruitless argument, and with it the chill of frost.
The Old Man fumbled for his pipe, filled it and scratched a match
sharply on the box. In the flare of it Andy watched his kind old face
with its fringe of grayish hair and its deep-graven lines of whimsical
humor.
"Doggone them boys, they ain't got the stayin' qualities I give 'em
credit for having," he remarked, holding up the match and looking
across at Andy, humped disconsolately in the shadows. "Them Diamond G
men has just about got 'em on the run, right now. Yuh couldn't get a
hundred-t'-one bet, down there."
Andy merely grunted.
"Say," asked the Old Man suddenly. "Didn't yuh kinda mistake that blue
roan for his twin brother, Pardner? This here cayuse is called Weaver.
I tried t' get hold of t'other one, but doggone 'em, they wouldn't
loosen up. Pardner wasn't for sale at no price, but they talked me
into buying the Weaver; they claimed he's just about as good a horse,
once he's tamed down some--and I thought, seein' I've got some real
_tamers_ on my pay-roll, I'd take a chance on him. I thought yuh knew
the horse--the way yuh read up his pedigree--till I seen yuh mount
him. Why, doggone it, yuh straddled him like yuh was just climbing a
fence! Maybe yuh know your own business best--but didn't yuh kinda
mistake him for Pardner? They're as near alike as two bullets run in
the same mold--as far as _looks_ go."
Andy got up and went to the door, and stood looking down the
dusk-muffled hill to the white blotch which was the camp; listened to
the jumble of voices still upraised in fruitless argument, and turned
to the Old Man.
"By gracious, that accounts for a whole lot," he said ambiguously.
II
"I don't see," said Cal Emmett crossly, "what's the use uh this whole
outfit trailing up to that contest. If I was Chip, I'd call the deal
off and start gathering calves. It ain't as if we had a man to ride
for that belt and purse. Ain't your leg well enough to tackle it,
Pink?"
"No," Pink answered shortly, "it ain't."
"Riding the rough bunch they've rounded up for that contest ain't
going to be any picnic," Weary defended his chum. "Cadwolloper would
need two good legs to go up against that deal."
"I wish Irish was here," Pink gloomed. "I'd be willing to back him;
all right. But it's too late now; he couldn't enter if he was here."
A voice behind them spoke challengingly. "I don't believe it would be
etiquette for one outfit to enter _two_ peelers. One's enough, ain't
it?"
The Happy Family turned coldly upon the speaker. It was Slim who
answered for them all. "I dunno as this outfit has got _any_ peeler in
that contest. By golly, it don't look like it since las' night!"
Weary was gentle, as always, but he was firm. "We kinda thought you'd
want to withdraw," he added.
Andy Green, tamer of wild ones, turned and eyed Weary curiously. One
might guess, from telltale eyes and mouth, that his calmness did not
go very deep. "I don't recollect mentioning that I was busy penning
any letter uh withdrawal," he said. "I got my sights raised to that
purse and that belt. I don't recollect saying anything about lowering
'em."
"Aw, gwan. I guess _I'll_ try for that purse, too! I betche I got as
good a show as--"
"Sure. Help yourself, it don't cost nothing. I don't doubt but what
you'd make a real pretty ride, Happy." Andy's tone was deceitfully
hearty. He did not sound in the least as if he would like to choke
Happy Jack, though that was his secret longing.
"Aw, gwan. I betche I could make as purty a ride as we've
saw--lately." Happy Jack did not quite like to make the thing too
personal, for fear of what might happen after.
"Yuh mean last night, don't yuh?" purred Andy.
"Well, by golly, I wish you'd tell us what yuh done it for!" Slim cut
in disgustedly. "It was nacherlay supposed you could ride; we got
_money_ up on yuh! And then, by golly, to go and make a fluke like
that before them Diamond G men--to go and let that blue roan pile yuh
up b'fore he'd got rightly started t' pitch--If yuh'd stayed with him
till he got t' swappin' ends there, it wouldn't uh looked quite so
bad. But t' go and git throwed down right in the start--By golly!"
Slim faced Andy accusingly. "B'fore them Diamond G men--and I've got
money up, by golly!"
"Yuh ain't lost any money yet, have yuh?" Andy inquired patiently.
What Andy felt like doing was to "wade into the bunch"; reason,
however, told him that he had it coming from them, and to take his
medicine, since he could not well explain just how it had happened. He
could not in reason wonder that the faith of the Happy Family was
shattered and that they mourned as lost the money they had already
rashly wagered on the outcome of the contest. The very completeness of
their faith in him, their very loyalty, seemed to them their undoing,
for to them the case was plain enough. If Andy could not ride the blue
roan in their own corral, how was he to ride that same blue roan in
Great Falls? Or, if he could ride him, how could any sane man hope
that he could win the purse and the belt under the stringent rules of
the contest, where "riding on the spurs," "pulling leather" and a
dozen other things were barred? So Andy, under the sting of their
innuendoes and blunt reproaches, was so patient as to seem to them
cowed.
"No, I ain't lost any yet, but by golly, I can see it fixin' to fly,"
Slim retorted heavily.
Andy looked around at the others, and smiled as sarcastically as was
possible considering the mood he was in. "It sure does amuse me," he
observed, "to see growed men cryin' before they're hurt! By gracious,
I expect t' make a stake out uh that fall! I can get long odds from
them Diamond Gs, and from anybody they get a chance to talk to. I'm
kinda planning," he lied boldly, "to winter in an orange grove and
listen at the birds singing, after I'm through with the deal."
"I reckon yuh can count on hearing the birds sing, all right," Pink
snapped back. "It'll be _tra-la-la_ for yours, if last night's a fair
sample uh what yuh expect to do with the blue roan." Pink walked
abruptly away, looking very much like a sulky cherub.
"I s'pose yuh're aiming to give us the impression that you're going to
ride, just the same," said Cal Emmett.
"I sure am," came brief reply. Andy was beginning to lose his temper.
He had expected that the Happy Family would "throw it into him," to a
certain extent, and he had schooled himself to take their drubbing.
What he had not expected was their unfriendly attitude, which went
beyond mere disappointment and made his offence--if it could be called
that--more serious than the occasion would seem to warrant. Perhaps
Jack Bates unwittingly made plain the situation when he remarked:
"I hate to turn down one of our bunch; we've kinda got in the habit uh
hanging together and backing each other's play, regardless. But darn
it, we ain't millionaires, none of us--and gambling, it is a sin. I've
got enough up already to keep me broke for six months if I lose, and
the rest are in about the same fix. I ain't raising no long howl,
Andy, but you can see yourself where we're kinda bashful about sinking
any more on yuh than what we have. Maybe you can ride; I've heard yuh
can, and I've seen yuh make some fair rides, myself. But yuh sure fell
down hard last night, and my faith in yuh got a jolt that fair broke
its back. If yuh done it deliberate, for reasons we don't know, for
Heaven's sake say so, and we'll take your word for it and forget your
rep for lying. On the dead, Andy, did yuh fall off deliberate?"
Andy bit his lip. His conscience had a theory of its own about
truth-telling, and permitted him to make strange assertions at times.
Still, there were limitations. The Happy Family was waiting for his
answer, and he knew instinctively that they would believe him now. For
a moment, temptation held him. Then he squared his shoulders and spoke
truly.
"On the dead, I hit the ground unexpected and inadvertant. I--"
"If that's the case, then the farther yuh keep away from that contest
the better--if yuh ask _me_." Jack turned on his heel and followed
Pink.
Andy stared after him moodily, then glanced at the rest. With one
accord they avoided meeting his gaze. "Damn a bunch uh quitters!" he
flared hotly, and left them, to hunt up the Old Man and Chip--one or
both, it did not matter to him.
Pink it was who observed the Old Man writing a check for Andy. He took
it that Andy had called for his time, and when Andy rolled his bed and
stowed it away in the bunk-house, saddled a horse and rode up the
grade toward town, the whole outfit knew for a certainty that Andy had
quit.
Before many hours had passed they, too, saddled and rode away, with
the wagons and the cavvy following after--and they were headed for
Great Falls and the fair there to be held; or, more particularly, the
rough-riding contest to which they had looked forward eagerly and with
much enthusiasm, and which they were now approaching gloomily and in
deep humiliation. Truly, it would be hard to find a situation more
galling to the pride of the Happy Family.
But Andy Green had not called for his time, and he had no intention of
quitting; for Andy was also suffering from that uncomfortable malady
which we call hurt pride, and for it he knew but one remedy--a remedy
which he was impatient to apply. Because of the unfriendly attitude of
the Happy Family, Andy had refused to take them into his confidence,
or to ride with them to the fair. Instead, he had drawn what money was
still placed to his credit on the pay-roll, had taken a horse and his
riding outfit and gone away to Dry Lake, where he intended to take the
train for Great Falls.
In Dry Lake, however, he found that the story of his downfall had
preceded him, thanks to the exultant men of the Diamond G, and that
the tale had not shrunk in the telling. Dry Lake jeered him as openly
as it dared, and part of it--that part which had believed in him--was
quite as unfriendly as was the Happy Family. To a man they took it for
granted that he would withdraw from the contest, and they were not
careful to conceal what they thought. Andy found himself rather left
alone, and he experienced more than once the unpleasant sensation of
having conversation suddenly lag when he came near, and of seeing
groups of men dissolve awkwardly at his approach. Andy, before he had
been in town an hour, was in a mood to do violence.
For that reason he kept his plans rigidly to himself. When someone
asked him if he had quit the outfit, he had returned gruffly that the
Flying U was not the only cow-outfit in the country, and let the
questioner interpret it as he liked. When the train that had its nose
pointed to the southwest slid into town, Andy did not step on, as had
been his intention. He remained idly leaning over the bar in Rusty
Brown's place, and gave no heed. Later, when the eastbound came
schreeching through at midnight, it found Andy Green on the platform
with his saddle, bridle, chaps, quirt and spurs neatly sacked, and
with a ticket for Havre in his pocket. So the wise ones said that they
knew Andy would never have the nerve to show up at the fair, after the
fluke he had made at the Flying U ranch, and those whose pockets were
not interested considered it a very good joke.
At Havre, Andy bought another ticket and checked the sack which held
his riding outfit; the ticket had Great Falls printed on it in bold,
black lettering. So that he was twelve hours late in reaching his
original destination, and to avoid unwelcome discovery and comment he
took the sleeper and immediately ordered his berth made up, that he
might pass through Dry Lake behind the sheltering folds of the berth
curtains. Not that there was need of this elaborate subterfuge. He was
simply mad clear through and did not want to see or hear the voice of
any man he knew. Besides, the days when he had danced in spangled
tights upon the broad, gray rump of a galloping horse while a
sober-clothed man in the middle of the ring cracked a whip and yelped
commands, had bred in him the unconscious love of a spectacular entry
and a dramatic finish.
That is why he sought out the most obscure rooming house that gave any
promise of decency and comfort, and stayed off Central Avenue and away
from its loitering groups of range dwellers who might know him. That
is why he hired a horse and rode early and alone to the fair grounds
on the opening day, and avoided, by a roundabout trail a certain
splotch of gray-white against the brown of the prairie, which he knew
instinctively to be the camp of the Flying U outfit, which had made
good time and were located to their liking near the river. Andy felt a
tightening of the chest when he saw the familiar tents, and kicked his
hired horse ill-naturedly in the ribs. It was all so different from
what he had thought it would be.
In those last two weeks, he had pictured himself riding vaingloriously
through town on his best horse, with a new Navajo saddle-blanket
making a dab of bright color, and a new Stetson hat dimpled
picturesquely as to crown and tilted rakishly over one eye, and with
his silver-mounted spurs catching the light; around him would ride the
Happy Family, also in gala attire and mounted upon the best horses in
their several strings. The horses would not approve of the
street-cars, and would circle and back--and it was quite possible,
even probable, that there would be some pitching and some pretty
riding before the gaping populace which did not often get a chance to
view the real thing. People would stop and gaze while they went
clattering by, and he, Andy Green, would be pointed out by the knowing
ones as a fellow that was going to ride in the contest and that stood
a good chance of winning. For Andy was but human, that he dreamed of
these things; besides, does not the jumping through blazing hoops and
over sagging bunting while one rides, whet insiduously one's appetite
for the plaudits of the crowd?
The reality was different. He was in Great Falls, but he had not
ridden vaingloriously down Central Avenue surrounded by the Happy
Family, and watched by the gaping populace. Instead, he had chosen a
side street and he had ridden alone, and no one had seemed to know or
care who he might be. His horse had not backed, wild-eyed, before an
approaching car, and he had not done any pretty riding. Instead, his
horse had scarce turned an eye toward the jangling bell when he
crossed the track perilously close to the car, and he had gone
"side-wheeling" decorously down the street--and Andy hated a pacing
horse. The Happy Family was in town, but he did not know where. Andy
kicked his horse into a gallop and swore bitterly that he did not
care. He did not suppose that they gave him a thought, other than
those impelled by their jeopardized pockets. And that, he assured
himself pessimistically, is friendship!
He tied the hired horse to the fence and went away to the stables and
fraternized with a hump-backed jockey who knew a few things himself
about riding and was inclined to talk unprofessionally. It was not at
all as Andy had pictured the opening day, but he got through the time
somehow until the crowd gathered and the racing began. Then he showed
himself in the crowd of "peelers" and their friends, as unconcernedly
as he might; and as unobtrusively. The Happy Family, he observed, was
not there, though he met Chip face to face and had a short talk with
him. Chip was the only one, aside from the Old Man, who really
understood. Billy Roberts was there, and he greeted Andy
commiseratingly, as one speaks to the sick or to one in mourning; the
tone made Andy grind his teeth, though he knew in his heart that Billy
Roberts wished him well--up to the point of losing the contest to him,
which was beyond human nature. Billy Roberts was a rider and knew--or
thought he knew--just how "sore" Andy must be feeling. Also, in the
kindness of his heart he tried blunderingly to hide his knowledge.
"Going up against the rough ones?" he queried with careful
carelessness, in the hope of concealing that he had heard the tale of
Andy's disgrace.
"I sure am," Andy returned laconically, with no attempt to conceal
anything.
Billy Roberts opened his eyes wide, and his mouth a little before he
recovered from his surprise. "Well, good luck to yuh," he managed to
say, "only so yuh don't beat me to it. I was kinda hoping yuh was too
bashful to get out and ride before all the ladies."
Andy, remembering his days in the sawdust ring, smiled queerly; but
his heart warmed to Billy Roberts amazingly.
They were leaning elbows on the fence below the grand stand, watching
desultorily the endless preparatory manoeuvres of three men astride
the hind legs of three pacers in sulkies. "This side-wheeling business
gives me a pain," Billy remarked, as the pacers ambled by for the
fourth or fifth time. "I like _caballos_ that don't take all day to
wind 'em up before they go. I been looking over our bunch. They's
horses in that corral that are sure going to do things to us twenty
peelers!"
"By gracious, yes!" Andy was beginning to feel himself again. "That
blue hoss--uh course yuh heard how he got me, and heard it with
trimmings--yuh may think he's a man-eater; but while he's a bad hoss,
all right, he ain't the one that'll get yuh. Yuh want t' watch out,
Billy, for that HS sorrel. He's plumb wicked. He's got a habit uh
throwing himself backwards. They're keeping it quiet, maybe--but I've
seen him do it three times in one summer."
"All right--thanks. I didn't know that. But the blue roan--"
"The blue roan'll pitch and bawl and swap ends on yuh and raise hell
all around, but he can be rode. That festive bunch up in the reserve
seats'll think it's awful, and that the HS sorrel is a lady's hoss
alongside him, but a real rider can wear him out. But that
sorrel--when yuh think yuh got him beat, Billy, is when yuh want to
watch out!"
Billy turned his face away from a rolling dustcloud that came down the
home stretch with the pacers, and looked curiously at Andy. Twice he
started to speak and did not finish. Then: "A man can be a sure-enough
rider, and get careless and let a horse pile him off him when he ain't
looking, just because he knows he can ride that horse," he said with a
certain diffidence.
"By gracious, yes!" Andy assented emphatically. And that was the
nearest they came to discussing a delicate matter which was in the
minds of both.
Andy was growing more at ease and feeling more optimistic every
minute. Three men still believed in him, which was much. Also, the
crowd could not flurry him as it did some of the others who were not
accustomed to so great an audience; rather, it acted as a tonic and
brought back the poise, the easy self-confidence which had belonged to
one André de Gréno, champion bareback rider. So that, when the
rough-riding began, Andy's nerves were placidly asleep.
At the corral in the infield, where the horses and men were
foregathered, Andy met Slim and Happy Jack; but beyond his curt
"Hello" and an amazed "Well, by golly!" from Slim, no words passed.
Across the corral he glimpsed some of the others--Pink and Weary, and
farther along, Cal Emmett and Jack Bates; but they made no sign if
they saw him, and he did not go near them. He did not know when his
turn would come to ride, and he had a horse to saddle at the command
of the powers that were. Coleman, the man who had collected the
horses, almost ran over him. He said "Hello, Green," and passed on,
for his haste was great.
Horse after horse was saddled and led perforce out into the open of
the infield; man after man mounted, with more or less trouble, and
rode to triumph or defeat. Billy Roberts was given a white-eyed little
bay, and did some great riding. The shouts and applause from the grand
stand rolled out to them in a great wave of sound. Billy mastered the
brute and rode him back to the corral white-faced and with beads of
sweat standing thick on his forehead.
"It ain't going to be such damn' easy money--that two hundred," he
confided pantingly to Andy, who stood near. "The fellow that gets it
will sure have to earn it."
Andy nodded and moved out where he could get a better view. Then
Coleman came and informed him hurriedly that he came next, and Andy
went back to his place. The horse he was to ride he had never seen
before that day. He was a long-legged brown, with scanty mane and a
wicked, rolling eye. He looked capable of almost any deviltry, but
Andy did not give much time to speculating upon what he would try to
do. He was still all eyes to the infield where his predecessor was
gyrating. Then a sudden jump loosened him so that he grabbed the
horn--and it was all over with that particular applicant, so far as
the purse and the championship belt were concerned. He was out of the
contest, and presently he was also back at the corral, explaining
volubly--and uselessly--just how it came about. He appeared to have a
very good reason for "pulling leather," but Andy was not listening and
only thought absently that the fellow was a fool to make a talk for
himself.
Andy was clutching the stirrup and watching a chance to put his toe
into it, and the tall brown horse was circling backwards with
occasional little side-jumps. When it was quite clear that the horse
did not mean to be mounted, Andy reached out his hand, got a rope from
somebody--he did not know who, though, as a matter of fact, it was
Pink who gave it--and snared a front foot; presently the brown was
standing upon three legs instead of four, and the gaping populace
wondered how it was done, and craned necks to see. After that, though
the horse still circled backwards, Andy got the stirrup and put his
toe in it and went up so easily that the ignorant might think anybody
could do it. He dropped the rope and saw that it was Pink who picked
it up.
The brown at first did nothing at all. Then he gave a spring straight
ahead and ran fifty yards or so, stopped and began to pitch. Three
jumps and he ran again; stopped and reared. It was very pretty to look
at, but Happy Jack could have ridden him, or Slim, or any other range
rider. In two minutes the brown was sulking, and it took severe
spurring to bring him back to the corral. Pitch he would not. The
crowd applauded, but Andy felt cheated and looked as he felt.
Pink edged toward him, but Andy was not in the mood for reconciliation
and kept out of his way. Others of the Happy Family came near, at
divers times and places, as if they would have speech with him, but he
thought he knew about what they would say, and so was careful not to
give them a chance. When the excitement was all over for that day he
got his despised hired horse and went back to town with Billy Roberts,
because it was good to have a friend and because they wanted to talk
about the riding. Billy did not tell Andy, either, that he had had
hard work getting away from his own crowd; for Billy was kind-hearted
and had heard a good deal, because he had been talking with Happy
Jack. His sympathy was not with the Happy Family, either.
On the second afternoon, such is effect of rigid winnowing, there were
but nine men to ride. The fellow who had grabbed the saddle horn,
together with ten others, stood among the spectators and made caustic
remarks about the management, the horses, the nine who were left and
the whole business in general. Andy grinned a little and wondered if
he would stand among them on the morrow and make remarks. He was not
worrying about it, though. He said hello to Weary, Pink and Cal
Emmett, and saddled a kicking, striking brute from up Sweetgrass way.
On this day the horses were wickeder, and one man came near getting
his neck broken. As it was, his collar-bone snapped and he was carried
off the infield on a stretcher and hurried to the hospital; which did
not tend to make the other riders feel more cheerful. Andy noted that
it was the HS sorrel which did the mischief, and glanced meaningly
across at Billy Roberts.
Then it was his turn with the striking, kicking gray, and he mounted
and prepared for what might come. The gray was an artist in his line,
and pitched "high, wide and crooked" in the most approved fashion. But
Andy, being also an artist of a sort, rode easily and with a grace
that brought much hand-clapping from the crowd. Only the initiated
reserved their praise till further trial; for though the gray was not
to say gentle, and though it took skill to ride him, there were a
dozen, probably twice as many, men in the crowd who could have done as
well.
The Happy Family, drawn together from habit and because they could
speak their minds more freely, discussed Andy gravely among
themselves. Betting was growing brisk, and if their faith had not been
so shaken they could have got long odds on Andy.
"I betche he don't win out," Happy Jack insisted with characteristic
gloom. "Yuh wait till he goes up agin that blue roan. They're savin'
that roan till the las' day--and I betche Andy'll git him. If he hangs
on till the las' day." Happy Jack laughed ironically as he made the
provision.
"Any you fellows got money yuh want to put up on this deal?" came the
voice of Andy behind them.
They turned, a bit shamefaced, toward him.
"Aw, I betche--" began Happy.
"That's what I'm here for," cut in Andy. "What I've got goes
up--saddle, spurs--_all_ I've got. You've done a lot uh mourning, now
here's a chance to break even on _me_. Speak up."
The Happy Family hesitated.
"I guess I'll stay out," dimpled Pink. "I don't just savvy your play,
Andy, and if I lose on yuh--why, it won't be the first time I ever
went broke."
"Well, by golly, _I'll_ take a chance," bellowed Slim, whose voice was
ever pitched to carry long distances in a high wind. "I'll bet yuh
fifty dollars yuh don't pull down that belt or purse. By golly,
there's two or three men here that can _ride_."
"There's only one that'll be the real star," smiled Andy with
unashamed egotism. "Happy, how rich do _you_ want to get off me?"
Happy said a good deal and "betche" several things would
happen--things utterly inconsistent with one another. In the end, Andy
pinned him down to twenty dollars against Andy's silver-mounted
spurs--which was almost a third more than the spurs were worth; but
Andy had no sympathy for Happy Jack and stuck to the price doggedly
until Happy gave in.
Jack Bates advertised his lack of faith in Andy ten dollars worth, and
Cal Emmett did the same. Irish, coming in on the afternoon train and
drifting instinctively to the vicinity of the Happy Family, cursed
them all impartially for a bunch of quitters, slapped Andy on the back
and with characteristic impetuosity offered a hundred dollars to
anybody who dared take him up, that Andy would win. And this after he
had heard the tale of the blue roan and before they told him about the
two rides already made in the contest.
It is true that Happy Jack endeavored to expostulate, but Irish glared
at him in a way to make Happy squirm and stammer incoherently.
"I've heard all about it," Irish cut in, "and I don't have to hear any
more. I know a rider when I see one, and my money's on Andy from start
to finish. You make me sick. Weary, have _you_ gone against our man?"
The tone was a challenge in itself.
Weary grinned goodnaturedly. "I haven't pulled down any bets," he
answered mildly, "and I haven't put up my last cent and don't intend
to. I'm an engaged young man." He shrugged his shoulders to point the
moral. "I sure do hope Andy'll win out," he added simply.
"_Hope_? Why, damn it, yuh _know_ he'll win!" stormed Irish.
Men in their vicinity caught the belligerence of the tone and turned
about, thinking there was trouble, and the Happy Family subsided into
quieter discussion. In the end Irish, discovering that Andy had for
the time being forsworn the shelter of the Flying U tents, stuck by
him loyally and forswore it also, and went with Andy to share the
doubtful comfort of the obscure lodging house. For Irish was all or
nothing, and to find the Happy Family publicly opposed--or at most
neutral--to a Flying U man in a rough-riding contest like this,
incensed him much.
The Happy Family began to feel less sure of themselves and a bit
ashamed--though of just what, they were not quite clear, for surely
they had reason a-plenty for doubting Andy Green.
The last day found the Happy Family divided against itself and growing
a bit venomous in its remarks. Andy had not as yet done anything
remarkable, except perhaps keep in the running when the twenty had
been culled to three: Billy Roberts, Andy and a man from the
Yellowstone Valley, called Gopher by his acquaintances. Accident and
untoward circumstances had thrown out the others--good riders all of
them, or they would not have been there. Happy Jack proclaimed loudly
in camp that Andy was still in because Andy had not had a real bad
horse. "I seen Coleman looking over the blue roan and talkin' to them
guys that runs things; they're goin' t' put Andy on him t-day, I
betche--and we seen how he can _ride_ him! Piled in a heap--"
"Not exactly," Pink interrupted. "I seem to remember Andy lighting on
his feet; and he was smoking when he started, and smoking when he
quit. It didn't strike me at the time, but that's kinda funny, don't
yuh think?"
So Pink went back to his first faith, and the Happy Family straightway
became loud and excited over the question of whether Andy did really
light upon his feet, or jumped up immediately, and whether he kept his
cigarette or made a new one. The discussion carried them to the fair
grounds and remained just where it started, so far as any amicable
decision was concerned.
Now this is a fair and true report of that last day's riding: There
being but the three riders, and the excitement growing apace, the
rough-riding was put first on the program and men struggled for the
best places and the best view of the infield.
In the beginning, Andy drew the HS sorrel and Billy Roberts the blue
roan. Gopher, the Yellowstone man, got a sulky little buckskin that
refused to add one whit to the excitement, so that he was put back and
another one brought. This other proved to be the wicked-eyed brown
which Andy had ridden the first day. Only this day the brown was in
different mood and pitched so viciously that Gopher lost control in
the rapid-fire changes, and rode wild, being all over the horse and
everywhere but on the ground. He did not pull leather, however though
he was accused by some of riding on his spurs at the last. At any
rate, Andy and Billy Roberts felt that the belt lay between
themselves, and admitted as much privately.
"You've sure got to ride like a wild man if yuh beat me to it,"
grinned Billy.
"By gracious, I'm after it like a wolf myself," Andy retorted. "Yuh
know how I'm fixed--I've just got to have it, Bill."
Billy, going out to ride, made no reply except a meaning head-shake.
And Billy certainly rode, that day; for the blue roan did his worst
and his best. To describe the performance, however, would be to invent
many words to supply a dearth in the language. Billy rode the blue
roan back to the corral, and he had broken none of the stringent rules
of the contest--which is saying much for Billy.
When Andy went out--shot out, one might say--on the sorrel, the Happy
Family considered him already beaten because of the remarkable riding
of Billy. When the sorrel began pitching the gaping populace, grown
wise overnight in these things, said that he was _e-a-s-y_--which he
was not. He fought as some men fight; with brain as well as muscle,
cunningly, malignantly. He would stop and stand perfectly still for a
few seconds, and then spring viciously whichever way would seem to him
most unexpected; for he was not bucking from fright as most horses do
but because he hated men and would do them injury if he could.
When the crowd thought him worn out, so that he stood with head
drooping all that Andy would permit, then it was that Andy grew most
wary. It was as he had said. Of a sudden, straight into the air leaped
the sorrel, reared and went backward in a flash of red. But as he
went, his rider slipped to one side, and when he struck the ground
Andy struck also--on his feet. "Get up, darn yuh," he muttered, and
when the sorrel gathered himself together and jumped up, he was much
surprised to find Andy in the saddle again.
Then it was that the HS sorrel went mad and pitched as he had never,
even when building his record, pitched before. Then it was that Andy,
his own temper a bit roughened by the murderous brute, rode as he had
not ridden for many a day; down in the saddle, his quirt keeping time
with the jumps. He was just settling himself to "drag it out of him
proper," when one of the judges, on horseback in the field, threw up
his hand.
"Get off!" he shouted, galloping closer. "That horse's got to be rode
again to-day. You've done enough this time."
So Andy, watching his chance, jumped off when the sorrel stopped for a
few seconds of breath, and left him unconquered and more murderous
than ever. A man with a megaphone was announcing that the contest was
yet undecided, and that Green and Roberts would ride again later in
the afternoon.
Andy passed the Happy Family head in air, stopped a minute to exchange
facetious threats with Billy Roberts, and went with Irish to roost
upon the fence near the judge's stand to watch the races. The Happy
Family kept sedulously away from the two and tried to grow interested
in other things until the final test.
It came, when Billy Roberts, again first, mounted the HS sorrel, still
in murderous mood and but little the worse for his previous battle.
What he had done with Andy he repeated, and added much venom to the
repetition. Again he threw himself backward, which Billy expected and
so got clear and remounted as he scrambled up. After that, the sorrel
simply pitched so hard and so fast that he loosened Billy a bit; not
much, but enough to "show daylight" between rider and saddle for two
or three high, crooked jumps. One stirrup he lost, rode a jump without
it and by good luck regained it as it flew against his foot. It was
great riding, and a gratifying roar of applause swept out to him when
it was over.
Andy, saddling the blue roan, drew a long breath. This one ride would
tell the tale, and he was human enough to feel a nervous strain such
as had not before assailed him. It was so close, now! and it might
soon be so far. A bit of bad luck such as may come to any man, however
great his skill, and the belt would go to Billy. But not for long
could doubt or questioning hold Andy Green. He led the Weaver out
himself, and instinctively he felt that the horse remembered him and
would try all that was in him. Also, he was somehow convinced that the
blue roan held much in reserve, and that it would be a great fight
between them for mastery.
When he gathered up the reins, the roan eyed him wickedly sidelong and
tightened his muscles, as it were, for the struggle. Andy turned the
stirrup, put in his toe, and went up in a flash, warned by something
in the blue roan's watchful eye. Like a flash the blue roan also went
up--but Andy had been a fraction of a second quicker. There was a
squeal that carried to the grand stand as the Weaver, wild-eyed and
with red flaring nostrils, pounded the wind-baked sod with high,
bone-racking jumps; changed and took to "weaving" till one wondered
how he kept his footing--more particularly, how Andy contrived to sit
there, loose-reined, firm-seated, riding easily. The roan, tiring of
that, began "swapping ends" furiously and so fast one could scarce
follow his jumps. Andy, with a whoop of pure defiance, yanked off his
hat and beat the roan over the head with it, yelling taunting words
and contemptuous; and for every shout the Weaver bucked harder and
higher, bawling like a new-weaned calf.
Men who knew good riding when they saw it went silly and yelled and
yelled. Those who did not know anything about it caught the infection
and roared. The judges galloped about, backing away from the living
whirlwind and yelling with the rest. Came a lull when the roan stood
still because he lacked breath to continue, and the judges shouted an
uneven chorus.
"Get down--the belt's yours"--or words to that effect. It was
unofficial, that verdict, but it was unanimous and voiced with
enthusiasm.
Andy turned his head and smiled acknowledgment. "All right--but wait
till I tame this hoss proper! Him and I've got a point to settle!" He
dug in his spurs and again the battle raged, and again the crowd, not
having heard the unofficial decision, howled and yelled approval of
the spectacle.
Not till the roan gave up completely and owned obedience to rein and
voiced command, did Andy take further thought of the reward. He
satisfied himself beyond doubt that he was master and that the Weaver
recognized him as such. He wheeled and turned, "cutting out" an
imaginary animal from an imaginary herd; he loped and he walked,
stopped dead still in two jumps and started in one. He leaned and ran
his gloved hand forgivingly along the slatey blue neck, reached
farther and pulled facetiously the roan's ears, and the roan meekly
permitted the liberties. He half turned in the saddle and slapped the
plump hips, and the Weaver never moved. "Why, you're an all-right
little hoss!" praised Andy, slapping again and again.
The decision was being bellowed from the megaphone and Andy, hearing
it thus officially, trotted over to where a man was holding out the
belt that proclaimed him champion of the state. Andy reached out a
hand for the belt, buckled it around his middle and saluted the grand
stand as he used to do from the circus ring when one André de Grenó
had performed his most difficult feat.
The Happy Family crowded up, shamefaced and manfully willing to own
themselves wrong.
"We're down and ready to be walked on by the Champion," Weary
announced quizzically. "Mama mine! but yuh sure can ride."
Andy looked at them, grinned and did an exceedingly foolish thing,
just to humiliate Happy Jack, who, he afterwards said, still looked
unconvinced. He coolly got upon his feet in the saddle, stood so while
he saluted the Happy Family mockingly, lighted the cigarette he had
just rolled, then, with another derisive salute, turned a double
somersault in the air and lighted upon his feet--and the roan did
nothing more belligerent than to turn his head and eye Andy
suspiciously.
"By gracious, maybe you fellows'll some day own up yuh don't know it
all!" he cried, and led the Weaver back into the corral and away from
the whooping maniacs across the track.
* * * * *
ANDY, THE LIAR
Andy Green licked a cigarette into shape the while he watched with
unfriendly eyes the shambling departure of their guest. "I believe the
darned old reprobate was lyin' to us," he remarked, when the horseman
disappeared into a coulee.
"You sure ought to be qualified to recognize the symptoms," grunted
Cal Emmett, kicking his foot out of somebody's carelessly coiled rope
on the ground. "That your rope, Happy? No wonder you're always on the
bum for one. If you'd try tying it on your saddle--"
"Aw, g'wan. That there's Andy's rope--"
"If you look at my saddle, you'll find my rope right where it
belongs," Andy retorted. "I ain't sheepherder enough to leave it
kicking around under foot. That rope belongs to his nibs that just
rode off. When he caught up his horse again after dinner, he throwed
his rope down while he saddled up, and then went off and forgot it. He
wasn't easy in his mind--that jasper wasn't. I don't go very high on
that hard-luck tale he told. I know the boy he had wolfing with him
last winter, and he wasn't the kind to pull out with all the stuff he
could get his hands on. He was an all-right fellow, and if there's
been any rusty work done down there in the breaks, this shifty-eyed
mark done it. He was lying--"
Somebody laughed suddenly, and another chuckle helped to point the
joke, until the whole outfit was in an uproar; for of all the men who
had slept under Flying-U tents and eaten beside the mess-wagon, Andy
Green was conceded to be the greatest, the most shameless and wholly
incorrigible liar of the lot.
"Aw, yuh don't want to get jealous of an old stiff like that," Pink
soothed musically. "There ain't one of us but what knows you could lie
faster and farther and more of it in a minute, with your tongue
half-hitched around your palate and the deaf-and-dumb language barred,
than any three men in Chouteau County. Don't let it worry yuh, Andy."
"I ain't letting it worry me," said Andy, getting a bit red with
trying not to show that the shot hit him. "When my imagination gets to
soaring, I'm willing to bet all I got that it can fly higher than the
rest of you, that have got brains about on a par with a sage-hen, can
follow. When I let my fancy soar, I take notice the rest of yuh like
to set in the front row, all right--and yuh never, to my knowledge,
called it a punk show when the curtain rung down; yuh always got the
worth uh your money, and then some.
"But if yuh'd taken notice of the load that old freak was trying to
throw into the bunch, you'd suspicion there was something scaley about
it; there was, all right. I'd gamble on it."
"From the symptoms," spoke Weary mildly, rising to an elbow, "Andy's
about to erupt one of those wide, hot, rushing streams of melted
imagination that bursts forth from his think-works ever so often.
Don't get us all worked up over it, Andy; what's it going to be this
time? A murder in the Bad-lands?"
Andy clicked his teeth together, thought better of his ill-humor and
made reply, though he had intended to remain dignifiedly silent.
"Yuh rung the bell, m'son--but it ain't any josh. By gracious, I mean
it!" He glared at those who gurgled incredulously, and went on: "No,
sir, you bet it ain't any josh with me _this_ time. That old gazabo
had something heavy on his conscience--and knowing the fellow he had
reference to, I sure believe he lied a whole lot when he said Dan
pulled out with all the stuff they'd got together, and went down
river. Maybe he went down river, all right--but if he did, it was most
likely to be face-down. Dan was as honest a boy as there is in the
country, and he had money on him that he got mining down in the little
Rockies last summer. I know, because he showed me the stuff last fall
when I met him in Benton, and he was fixing to winter with this fellow
that just left.
"Dan was kinda queer about some things, and one of 'em was about
money. It never made any difference how much or how little he had, he
always packed it in his clothes; said a bank had busted on him once
and left him broke in the middle uh winter, and he wasn't going to let
it happen again. He never gambled none, nor blowed his money any
farther than a couple uh glasses uh beer once in a while. He was one
uh these saving cusses--but he was honest; I know that for a fact.
"So he had all this money on him, and went down there with this
jasper, that he'd got in with somehow and didn't know much about, and
they wolfed all winter, according to all accounts, and must uh made
quite a stake, the way the bounty runs up, these days. And here comes
this darned Siwash, hiking out uh there fast as he can--and if he
hadn't run slap onto us at this crossing, I'll gamble he'd never uh
showed up at camp at all, but kept right on going. We didn't ask him
no questions, did we? But he goes to all the pains uh telling us his
tale uh woe, about how Dan had robbed him and pulled out down river.
"If that was the case, wouldn't he be apt to hike out after him and
try and get back his stuff? And wouldn't--"
"How much money did this friend uh yours have?" queried Jack Bates
innocently.
"Well, when I seen him in Benton, he had somewhere between six and
seven hundred dollars. He got it all changed into fifty-dollar
bills--"
"Oh, golly!" Jack Bates rolled over in disgust. "Andy's losing his
grip. Why, darn yuh, if you was in a normal, lying condition, you'd
make it ten thousand, at the lowest--and I've seen the time when you'd
uh said fifty thousand; and you'd uh made us swallow the load, too!
Buck up and do a good stunt, Andy, or else keep still. Why, Happy Jack
could tell that big a lie!"
"Aw, gwan!" Happy Jack rose up to avenge the insult. "Yuh needn't
compare me to Andy Green. I ain't a liar, and I can lick the darned
son-of-a-gun that calls me one. I ain't, and yuh can't say I am,
unless yuh lie worse'n Andy."
"Calm down," urged Weary pacifically. "Jack said yuh _could_ lie; he
didn't say--"
"By gracious, you'd think I was necked up with a whole bunch uh George
Washingtons!" growled Andy, half-indignantly. "And what gets me is,
that I tell the truth as often as anybody in the outfit; oftener than
some I could mention. But that ain't the point. I'm telling the truth
now, when I say somebody ought to hike down to their camp and see what
this old skunk has done with Dan. I'd bet money you'd find him sunk in
the river, or cached under a cut-bank, or something like that. If he'd
kept his face closed I wouldn't uh give it a second thought, but the
more I think uh the story he put up, the more I believe there's
something wrong. He's made way with Dan somehow, and--"
"Yes. Sure thing," drawled Pink wickedly. "Let's organize a searching
party and go down there and investigate. It's only about a three or
four days' trip, through the roughest country the Lord ever stood on
end to cool and then forgot till it crumpled down in spots and got set
that way, so He just left it go and mixed fresh mud for the job He was
working on. Andy'd lead us down there, and we'd find--"
"His friend Dan buried in a tomato can, maybe," supplied Jack Bates.
"By golly, I'll bet yuh _could_ put friend Dan into one," Slim burst
out. "By golly, _I_ never met up with no
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